A “Revalution” of Giving Credit Where Credit is Due By Audrey Cowan My father always remarked that I was too smart for my own good. This was fairly rich coming from him, the often-unemployed high school dropout who was recently divorced from my Mom. He loathed the fact that we now lived an hour’s drive away from the home where my brother and I would’ve been destined to graduate from a high school class of 31 students and eventually become either the Assistant Manager at our town’s Brookshire Brother’s or a teen parent junkie hooked on horse. However, his destiny for us never came to be, and he seemed to subconsciously resent us for our mom’s decisions. “So, what’you learning in school, girl?” His hoarse voice barked out of him as he took a deep drag of his lit Malboro. Catching me off guard like this was a special gift of his and my seven year old wit still had a lot of practice to endure to truly navigate his tests. “In Ms. Stanfield’s class, we’re starting to learn about the American Revolution and I already aced the vocabulary test,” I responded eagerly with my head snapping over towards him. His car was filled with garbage that caused me to curl up my short legs onto the passenger seat, but the destination of the Liberty Municipal’s public basketball court erased all of the potential health hazards from my mind. “Spell revolution,” He quipped as he tightened his thin lips around his cigarette. My father’s validation of me was the highest prize I could ever achieve, better than any honor roll certificate could ever treat me. I thought as I articulated slowly, “R-e-v-a-l-u-t-i-o-n.” A cloud of smoke and the sound of his fingers snapping in disappointment filled the 2000 Toyota Camry’s cabin as he grumbled, “Wrong. Name one battle from the Revolutionary War?”
I scrunch my face up in disgust at the ever-familiar stench of burnt tobacco and as I struggled to recall a single proper noun, let alone name a battle, “The Boston Massacre?” All of my juvenile confidence had drained from my body as I watched my father’s jaw begin to grind and his calloused hands recklessly switched road lanes. My heart fell to my gut as he drove past the faded sign that I had adored for years. “We’re not going to play basketball?” I protested with a furrowed brow as I anxiously picked at my nail beds. My father rubbed his wrinkled forehead and asserted, “Not until you start retaining some information in that smart-ass head.” His words echoed in my chest and my ears burned scarlet in humiliation. I gazed at the forsaken basketball rolling among the trash beneath my feet, fearful of where my manic father was taking us. A seat-gripping hour drive later, I glanced up and vaguely recognized the grand emerald-and-beige building in front of the parking lot. The Barnes and Noble in Beaumont, TX was known for its size and it did not disappoint on that September morning. Large forest green pillars welcomed my clueless baby brother and I as we mindlessly trailed after our father through the meticulously organized aisles of various genres. We hesitantly turned the corner into the informational books section and I approached the figure of him squatting down to the lowest shelf, significantly creasing his beat-up work boots. The row was full of “Smithosian-this,” “Merriam-that,” and other bewildering words that weren’t yet in my precocious vocabulary. My face was formed into a sour expression as my view scanned over large books I would typically find on my Grandpa’s bedside
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