1971

I took a creative non-fiction writing class some years back. It allowed those of us to explore our pasts, or anything/anyone we came in contact with and write about it, but in a creative fiction type way. I am really glad I took that class as it has helped me to explore the world around me differently. Now I look on each experience as my next piece to write. Enjoy!

My mom and dad had been married for a year. She was twenty-one. He was twenty-nine. They both grew up in a miniscule town (or parish as it is called) in Louisiana. Lake Arthur to be exact. My mom once told me that before her last year of school, from her elementary to 11th grade year she had been in a segregated school. She graduated 1968.

When I was born, in 1971, I was born in Jefferson Parish in Lafeyette, LA. If you read my certificate you will see two things that are wrong or at least weird to see. My name is misspelled. So far at 38, have not had a problem with securing a drivers license or state id, but I am afraid that I may have a problem when it comes to securing a passport.

But the most glaring anomaly is for race it says colored. My birth certificate is my own historical fact. Even in the 70’s people were still referred to as colored. Granted it was the south, but civil rights was alive and well, a thing of the future not the past. Personally I don’t feel anything about it. It just is. I know who I am and what I am. I am more upset over the misspelled name.

I guess my birth certificate is a metaphor of my life; stuff just happens to me. Either my own doing or I just happened to be in the wrong place and the wrong time. Sometimes, though I look back over my life and think, it started in 1971.

If you like more I might be persuaded to write more about me.