By Merrill Markoe
Merrill Markoe is the author of How to Be Hap-Hap-Happy Like Me. This Article
originally appeared in the New York Times on January 30, 1996.
As a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, I was fascinated by the Board of Regents' new affirmative action guidelines that consider social and economic disadvantage instead of the race and sex criteria of yesteryear. Admissions officers will give preference to students from "difficult family situations," which applicants can describe in personal essays.
This news made me regret all the energy I wasted in high school pursuing an acceptable grade-point average. If these guidelines had been in effect back then, I would have slept through my senior year and taken my chances with an essay that probably would have read like this:
Dear Board of Regents,
I realize that my grades are not all that great, but this is because I am a survivor of a difficult family situation (to say the least). If you talk to my parents (which I hope you do not), I bet they would say that my basic needs for food and shelter are being met.
Right. If I am willing to eat what they eat, which is impossible as I have been a lacto-vegetarian for more than six months--a fact that both parents refuse to take seriously. They constantly tease and taunt me: "Care for more bean sprouts, Miss Vegetarian? Doesn't it bother you to kill an innocent potato? Isn't a vegetable a living thing, too?"
Many are the nights I run sobbing from the dinner table, only to lie alone, quaking with hunger and shame, in the dark, dark shadows of my cold and lonely room.
Oh, I guess you could say I have "shelter," if that's what you call such a soul-deadening environment. My mother sees dirt everywhere and constantly sends me in to perfectly clean rooms and demands that I clean them. So I move a few things around, but how can you clean something that is already totally clean?
I swear there is no way to please these people, especially when you take into account that my mother has horrible taste in clothes. One time she actually expected me to wear a navy blue wool blend skirt gathered at the waist and trimmed in white piping that comes with a matching short-sleeved jacket with a SILHOUETTE OF A DUCK IN A RAIN HAT STITCHED ON THE POCKET!!!
Believe me, trying to talk to them about this stuff makes no difference, because no one cares about my feelings. For instance, I would rather not go to this one restaurant where a lot of the varsity football players work part time as busboys and waiters. But if we must, is it too much to ask that my father, just one time, NOT make horrible dumb jokes? For weeks afterward, whenever the guys see me they roll their eyes in a lizard-like expression that means, "Oh, your DAD!!!"
Which brings me to the fact that I am not permitted to have a social life in any meaningful sense of the word. If a person gets her driver's license, then she should have full access to the car, even if she failed her test for a license the first three times, because she was very distracted due to personal matters that I cannot get into right now--except to say that every single guy that I like has something wrong with him, according to my parents' twisted view of reality in which they refuse to comprehend that a shaved head or a tattoo is a way for a person to demonstrate his individuality and creativity. And if I suddenly want to shave my head and get a tattoo to express my individuality and creativity, I am not under his influence, and should not be grounded and treated like a criminal.
I do not intend to let this painful start in life keep me from striving fully for a brighter tomorrow. If you admit me, I will work hard to achieve my goal of becoming someone really important and famous. I am not absolutely sure what I want to do yet, but I will show the world I have overcome my pathetic, restrictive, boring childhood. Thank you.