Memoir Case - Great Expectations

Destiny Crockett

AP Eng Lang

January 27, 2011

Call me the multifaceted silhouette of dreams dreamt up for me by those who know the sky is my limit.

The apple of everyone's eye, that girl was. Because she came first, smiling wide and subconsciously promising to fulfill expectations set by each generation of women in her family. They'd known then that who she was would be who I am and still promise to become.

Great Expectations

From the time I entered this world they'd deemed me the joyous, outgoing, self proclaimed...Destiny. I was and am my family's golden child. I guess intuition assured them that I'd do whatever I was destined to do and be the best at it. I'd enjoyed their company. Beautiful, strong, encouraging women around me, who I'd love to no end because I was always inspired, and almost forced to be none other than myself in their presence. I took something from each of them, because they varied in age but neither lacked a personality of her own. They prayed I'd be who they taught me (and, in most instances, showed me) to be; myself. I'd never been put in a box, because they knew I didn't belong in any place I'd have to be contained and my blossoming personality just wouldn't fit. Since I made my grand entrance on May 30, 1995, they've been dreaming, and encouraging, dreaming and encouraging, and every once in a while, asking me what my own dreams were and are.

Most kids who grow up with people around them who expect the world from them become angry about it. Those expectations, or the fact that they're high beyond even my understanding, never bothered me. In fact, I didn't realize how high their expectations were and how much they believe in me until the past few years. I never knew that they were and are all waiting. Just waiting for me to grow into the woman that they know I will be. That anticipation never bothered me until I learned how to come up with my own goal. Then, when I spoke about them I quickly learned that what my goals for myself were were much different than everyone else's goals for me. Then, it bothered me somewhat but the mere fact that everyone in my life actually had a dream of who I should be based upon my capabilities was and is flattering.

Becoming Myself

My mother, aunts, and grandmothers often tell me how talkative I was. I do recall that it was always them I'd talk to, instead of kids my own age. I remember there being several kids around the neighborhood, but I've always liked being around the adults in my life a lot more than other children. Even then they'd called me ahead of my years. I guess my four year old self already had the wisdom that told me that the kids around me didn't have anything more to offer to me than the grown ups did. They didn't present me with a chance to grow. They certainly didn't teach me what being around the grown ups taught me which somehow I knew would be what I really needed.

Of course, I didn't know how different I was or realize that, as my mother and grandmother claimed, I actually was a little different than the rest until I had to be around kids my own age. So there I was in preschool, only talking to a select few of my peers because I couldn't relate to most. They didn't sing songs by the Temptations or Smokey Robinson or spit words of wisdom about money and getting along with people to me the way the people in my family did. They didn't prefer Lone Star over McDonald's the way I did because the food at McDonald's wasn't quite right. I didn't have anything against them, their ways were just unfamiliar and didn't even compare to the company I was usually in. I definitely am the same way now that I was then, socially. Anyone I've ever been extremely close to has been an adult. I have a few close friends my age but even their company doesn't measure up to that of the adults I've known. I've just never understood the sumptions of those my own age.

The Little Writer in Me

My grandmother tells me about the days when I'd make believe stories about anything, or everything I came across. She talks fondly about how imaginative I was. And even I remember the times I'd see some man, and look to my grandmother and tell her how he had two kids and an angry wife and a talking dog that I saw on my way home from preschool. And how I'd had a few conversations with that dog myself. He was grumpy though, only responded to you when you gave him green ice cream, that dog. Although now I still think that most kids are imaginative and make believe things, and, in this instance, I was no different from the rest, she insists that it held significance as the beginning of my being a writer. I'd fool the adults in my family sometimes, and others they'd expect me to be "just kidding" as I called it to defend myself when my mother and great grandmother had said I'd been "lying." Again I never saw it as something special, until a few years later when I began putting these "lies" on paper and watched them somehow become works of art that I sometimes discarded but always enjoyed creating.

My grandmother will still say that she knew then that I would be a "creative" kid; I never paid much attention to it. I was her granddaughter. Of course to her this would make me special. When kids first hear music and they respond by dancing, their parents anticipate that they're going to be the next Alvin Ailey. They don't realize that every little kid dances upon hearing music. It's no big deal. I didn't anticipate being the next great writer as my grandmother did. But little did I know these stories that were no big deal to me (and came so naturally) were the beginning of the amazing writer I'm striving to be now.

Me and Literature

Then, books were my friends. I'd read so many, and even then thought that when I'd learned to read, the whole world opened up to me. Cliché, of course, because anyone who appreciates literature will claim that learning to read was a pivotal moment in her life. It was at this time that I had made my first and perhaps the only significant realization that I might expect to need in life; that all things really are possible, and that, like the characters I'd gotten to know, I could do just about anything. This realization may have contributed to the thought I have today that the world is mine to go through and discover and take advantage