Samuel Beccaria

Band – B

English

Language Autobiography

            I was born white. I’ll die white. All my life people have seen me as white. People only see what they see, and they see only the color of my skin. But what they hear is a different story. Sometimes they hear a man with authority, with strength and wisdom. Sometimes they hear the kindness, warmth, and humor, other times they hear the scorn, bitterness and wrath. Yet all the time, they hear the voice of a scared child, frightened of getting his words wrong, terrified of when the next thorny root will trip his speech.

I have always had a problem with the way I utilize language. Speaking to people would be a chore for me. Repeatedly I would either mumble, stutter, or trip over my words. Having to constantly say again my simple, “Hello”’s and “How are you”’s in a voice that could rise above the mumbling. Sometimes I even jumble the first letters of two words with each other, tike lhat, a curse inherited from my mother. These things were, and still continue to be, my weaknesses, inspired by the frightened child cornered in the back of my mind. As a little boy, in my head Math played with Logic and Intuition flirted with Reason and Morals, but Language always would be stuck at the corner of the playground, afraid to come out of its safe place.

My brother was a constant offender of my tongue, insulting it and battering it with mocking language. It was a while ago when I was twelve, when my tongue was plagued with constant error that my brother had offended the lumbering and somber muscle in my mouth. He and I were at home during the midday, in the summer time. The closed basement walls shook with our bickering over who would get to use the computer. The chill of the basement seemed to try to cool our argument, but the sheer heat of it was too much for the cold to quell. I began to stutter and shouted in fury, “I want to use che tomputer!” He cackled and mocked my blunder, “I wanna use che tompoooter! I waaannnaaa uze che tompoooter!” He chanted it with the voice of malicious intent. I screamed, in a high pitched infuriated voice, “Stop it! You jig berk!” I blushed, and he laughed even more. I decided to end our argument in traditional way brothers end it, and I launched myself at him and we began to fight.

When I look back on it now, a lot of the fights between my brother and I was over or instigated by the way I spoke. My brother would always find it in him to mock the way my tongue tied, only because he found a need to feed off of that weakness. And by that means, he could dangle me upon strings like a puppeteer; coerce me into things that I would refuse to do at first. That is how people are in today’s world; they take advantage of those who are weak in the tongue. It is so easy for a person to take control of you if that person can talk to you with a commanding voice, with devious tongues that can guide puppets with mocks and harsh words.

The way he made me sound was to my general distaste, for we all want to sound great in the eyes of our superiors. We can always put on the façade of strength and wisdom in the way we look, but the way we sound to others determines truly what we are. For language is more powerful than sight, it can explain what is under the skin. It is the direct representation of the character, mood, and feelings of a person.