Questions and photo for essay #4

Tattoos

• What exactly is a tattoo, and how does it stay on your body permanently?
• What was the initial significance of a tattoo?
• What over the past decade has made tattoos so popular?
• Why can having tattoos and other piercings and body modifications affect your chances of employment?
• How is traditional tattooing different from the type of tattooing we see done today?
• Is tattooing a job that is nontraditional for women?

What is it and how is it permanent?

Initial significance?
Why so popular?
Can it affect your future?

Summary - Maid to Order

In the article “Maid to Order” Author Barabra Ehrenreich talks about the growing trend of hiring household “help”. In the past two or three decades housework had gone from being strictly women’s work, to having slight help from the men, to being the work of someone deemed of lower standards. Though, this statement isn’t entirely true. Now-a-days hired help is made up of both a great deal of men and women. This article starts off as being about gender inequality, but then turns into an issue of class and moral standards, with some of her own opinions from spending a few years in the house cleaning business herself.

                The effects of the house cleaning businesses flourishing are hugely affecting corporate America.  Companies like Merry Maids have come to stay. Merry Maids are in one of the biggest corporate chains around, the Service Master conglomerate, which includes companies such as ChemLawn, Terminex, Rescue Rooter, and Furniture Medic.  The starting of cleaning companies has seemed to start a chain reaction with other companies offering similar services. There are chains that will do your grocery shopping, take care of your house or pets, and even pick up and deliver dry cleaning.  With companies like that its no wonder that people are pawning off their floor sweeping and toilet scrubbing to someone else as well.

                It’s not just the ultra-wealthy are spending their money hiring house hold help, but does it send the wrong message to the children living in households where “cleaning ladies” are present? In her article Ehrenreich talks about the wealthier class somewhat creating a prolonged existence of the “servant class” of people in this country.  The children in families like these are being raised with the attitude that the people that clean up after them are “lower” than everyone else.  

                It’s likely that the hiring of house cleaners will easily make its way down into many middle class homes. With the hours of working parents rising instead of decreasing the reliance on hired help will surely increase as well. Not only are the parents hours at work growing longer, but the children, who were one expected to do a great deal of work around the house are getting busier as well. From sports, to clubs and other extracurricular activities kids just aren’t around to help out as much as they once were.

                The trend of hired help is more than likely going to continue on to future generations. Morally Americans are losing quite a bit when they hire people to help them do everything. Americans do nothing for themselves anymore. For the most part we buy our clothes from name brand stores, and buy our food from stores. We look for every possible way to put the most minimal amount of effort into everything that we do. So why should our house cleaning routines be any different?

Three Words.

He says “I love you”, right before he stepped out the door; onto a bus, to a plane, to a place far away. A place where he can’t speak, can’t sit, and can barely breathe without permission. He’s going to learn to fight, how to protect the innocent people of this country with honor and pride. But we haven’t spoken in a month, and the time drags on at an almost unbareable pace. Day, after day, I miss you, until my lungs almost collapse from the weight of this heavy heart, and I don’t know how much longer I can go without you. Sometimes, “I love you” just isn’t enough.

Personal Essay; rough draft.

 (I don't have a title for this yet, and the endings kind of weak)...

 Everyone remembers the house they grew up in. It’s like a part of your childhood that you don’t forget. But for me, the last memories I had in that house weren’t the kind that you want to remember. The house haunts me with memories of  loneliness, hurt, and addiction affecting one of the people that I love the most; my dad. And all I could do was sit there helplessly and watch him fall deeper and deeper into his own sadness.

            My sophomore year in high school my parents became another statistic in the ever-rising divorce rate. While my mom moved in with her mother, my younger brother and I decided to stay with my dad, in the house we had grown up in. It was rough at first, my dad missed my mom and my mom was upset that her two kids hadn’t left with her. So as anyone could guess, there was a lot of fighting occurring on a daily basis. But eventually the dust had settled and everything seemed to be on its way to getting back to normal.

            Then Melissa came along. Young, beautiful, and someone every newly single man could want, but none should ever go after. They started “dating”, or so my dad thought. It was more like them going out and my dad spending money on her and her daughter. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Melissa, but more like a big sister (considering she was only 11 years older than me and my dad was 48) not as a new mommy.

            She kept this charade going on for a few months, allowing my dad, lonely and vulnerable, to get into debt while trying to impress her. Eventually she said she was done with it, and shattered my dad’s already wounded heart. He wasn’t the same after that. All of his built up emotions from the divorce came pouring out after this happened. A person can only take so much rejection. He had hit his breaking point, and had turned to the numbing powers of alcohol to help him forget.

            He became so absorbed in his self medicating that he hardly left his bedroom, stopped going to work, and neglected the one kid that stayed with him through everything; me. Things stayed like that for a week or two, but instead of staying at the level of bad it started at, things escalated and got much worse. His drinking got so bad he could hardly move, and I had to do almost everything for him. At age 16 the last thing that should be on your mind is how you’re going to take care of your father, but that was my reality for that short period in my life.

            My dad started letting his depression take over. Suddenly, the strongest person I knew became like this lost little puppy dog. And then he gave up. He decided that nothing in life was worth living for anymore. He was as drunk as I’d ever seen him, and as he walked out the door, keys in hand, he slurred the words “I’m sorry”, and looked at me with a sense of regret mixed with Johnny Walker in his eyes.

            I called my aunt, his sister, the only person I could think of to try and find him and talk some sense into him. She did the only thing she could think of, called the police. She gave them his license plate, thinking that a whole bunch of cruisers had a hell of a better chance at finding him then she and I would. But before any searching began he pulled back into the driveway. Still full of thoughts of suicide he began screaming at those who were there only to help him.

            Next to pull into the driveway were the police, only to find my dad screaming at everyone around him. They decided to take him away, to put him in some hospital that could hopefully help him, but all I could see at that point was my dad being put in the back of a police cruiser in handcuffs, looking more lost than ever before. Everyone around tried to comfort me, but I just sat there, stunned. A whirlwind of emotions fluttered around inside me, and I wasn’t exactly sure which one I was supposed to be feeling. Grief; that all of this was happening, joy; that my father hadn’t gone and killed himself, fear; of what would happen to him now and where I was supposed to live, and regret; that maybe I could have done something to stop all of this from happening. After all of this had happened my mom thought that it would be best if I moved in with her.

            My dad came out of that hospital a completely different person. He seemed happy, of course, the new medication that they had given him could have had something to do with that. But still, my mom wouldn’t let me move back in with him. That house that I had grown up in would never be my home again. I could never go back there and remember all of the fun times I had, I could only remember the horrors I had seen there over the past few months.

            The things that I saw go on have stuck with me to this day. I didn’t realize it until recently, but it’s all made me the person that I am today. I have chosen not to drink, do any drugs, or do anything that could make me lose control like I’d seen my father do. I never want to have to be in a situation where I cannot control everything that’s happening to me, and have to have someone watch over me like I’m some kind of toddler. So as traumatic as this situation was for me, without it I could have ended up choosing a much different path than the one I’m on right now.

Process for writing my personal essay.

Process for Personal Essay.

I decided on this topic because I honestly couldn't think of another personal experience to write about. Nothing else came to mind when I was thinking about what to write about, so I decided to just go with my first instinct. When I write I usually just go with what comes into my head and write it all down then reread and change things. It took me a few sittings to finish the rough draft. I wrote it on notebook paper first, then I typed it out so I could have an electronic copy. This was actually a really hard essay for me to think of a topic. It's not that easy to write about yourself, or a personal experience.