Sydney

Sydney Napp 4/3/11

I interviewed my father and a little bit my mother. My father was born in Brooklyn, then moved to Long Island; his brother was also born in Brooklyn and his sister was born in Long Island. His brother is 3 years younger than him and his sister is 8 years younger than him. My fathers sister, Lisa Beth, is now married with two kids, a boy and a girl, and she’s a stay at home mom while her husband is a contractor. My fathers brother, Andrew, is gay, and has a partner, Alex. Andrew works for City Bank. My father had a mother, Nancy and a father, Jack. His mother was a teacher until she had him and then she stopped so she could take care of the kids. My dad’s father worked in a plumber supply company with his father. My grandparents got divorced when my father was in college and both got remarried. My grandfather died about 8 years ago of stomach cancer, and my grandmother is still happily married to her husband, Jerry. After all of the kids were grown up my grandmother went back to work as a teacher, but is now retired. My father had a friend, Edd York, who he had met in fourth grade and they were friends all through high school and then split up for college, but rekindled later. Edd York had introduced my mother and father. My dad told me that he and Edd were mostly friends because they both loved the same sports. In junior high my dad had a job as a babysitter and then in high school had a job in a bicycle repair shop. He had also done research at North Shore University Hospital, and he coincidentally works for North Shore LIJ now. I asked my dad how girls and boys were treated differently when they were my age. He said that there wasn’t much difference. All of the girls were allowed to play sports at his school, he told me the only sport they didn’t do was girls soccer. My father’s daily routine was normal. He got up, went to school, and did afterschool activities. Usually he had sports or Hebrew school. He told me that he never had sleepovers as a boy, he didn’t know if girls had sleepovers but boys never did. He also told me that one of the most nerve-racking things is having to pick up the phone and call a girl. He said it was one of the most embarrassing things he’d done. My mom told me a couple of different things. She told me that where she lived, Great Neck, that girls weren’t allowed to play sports. Her sister, Doreen, was on the first girls softball team and it was a big deal. I think that there are some similarities to my life and to my parents life, but overall I think that it was all pretty similar.


 * I like how you have a lot of detail throughout the essay, but I feel that you have to much story and not enough about what your main focus is...I had a hard time trying to figure out what the main focus of your essay is. -Alexis **


 * Good Stories, but they need to be put into context. - Jack **