Autobiography: As a Child

This is How People Described Me as a Child, and How I Saw Myself

When I was a child one of the first and most consistent comments and/or descriptions that I can recall were comments about my eyes. People always would stop me and say, “You have the most beautiful eyes.” To this day I get comments about the color of my eyes, although nowadays it is often followed, or preceded by, “are they real?” You see, I have hazel eyes and as I have come to learn through the years it is not very common for an African-American man to have hazel eyes, although I feel as though I have run into quite a few men and women who share the trait, (But were they real?). But the thousands of compliments I received as a child and young adult had the awesome side effect of instilling a great deal of self-confidence as it related to my general physical appearance, more on that in a moment.

Don West, Jr. in 1976, (2 years old)

The second most memorable comment was often about my ability to remember people, places, conversations and events. When I was three years old I went to Nashville to my Aunt Joanne’s, (my dad’s baby sister), college graduation from Fisk University. To this day I still remember many of the events that occurred in Nashville back in 1977 even though I was only three at the time. My favorite, I was dancing with all my aunt’s college girlfriends wearing a little light green suit and bow tie. (I’ve been the life of the party for the past thirty-two years apparently, and definitely looking forward to the next sixty or so!)

There is another occasion when my ‘Tall Me Me’, (that is what I called my mom’s mother, I actually called both grandmothers ‘Me Me’, but my maternal grandmother was dubbed ‘Tall Me Me’ because she stood 5’10” tall and my dad’s mother was closer to 5’ even.), called me into the room to give her friends driving directions from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Huntsville, Alabama. Not thinking anything of it, I rattled off the interstates and highways that one must travel to complete such a trip. Several years ago I was thinking of that moment and realized, those people in the room that day were probably not going to Huntsville, Alabama and have thus concluded that ‘Tall Me Me’ was showing them something about her grandson and his memory. Unfortunately, ‘Tall Me Me’ passed away when I was in 11th grade, so I will have to wait until we are one day reunited to get the details about what was really going on in the living room that particular day.

Within the confines of my family many often commented on my mouth. You know the phrase, “boy your mouth is going to get you into trouble one day!” I’ve learned in later years through conversations with my mother that she was often lectured by the family elders about how free she allowed me to be with my expression, especially verbally. I do not want to paint the wrong picture, since some of today’s youth seem to go to previously unknown extremes with their words and lack of respect for adults and authority. My father was a firm disciplinarian, he still would subject you to a session with the belt if you tip-toed beyond his boundaries, but that said, I was free to express myself and more importantly my dreams and aspirations.

Whenever I would speak about doing things that made no sense for our current socio-economic circumstance or the foreseeable future, I learned that my mother served as a strong barrier against naysayers and disappointingly numerous adults who wanted to crush and dispel the dreams of a little boy. I will be eternally grateful for that constant freedom my parents provided, because it gave me wings and allowed me to believe that I could change the stars if I would only set my mind to it. My father would always say, “Anything is possible, you simply must plan your work and work your plan.”

As a kid my most consistent thought about myself was, “boy I am skinny!” I was as thin as a rail and quite self-conscious about it. Sometimes I would be teased in school for being thin, even leading to fights when somebody would take the jokes to far on the playground. Oh, how I long today to be magically reconnected with that super-fast metabolism of my youth.

So how did people describe you as a child? How did you see yourself?