My father is a construction worker with an education that goes only as far as 6th grade. He drives a bulldozer and has for my whole life—waking up at 4 in the morning, stumbling home at 5 p.m., and falling asleep by 9 p.m. He never really had anything to do with raising us (I’m the youngest of 8), if only because he was too damn tired.When I was about 12, Madonna was ALL THE RAGE, and all the girls were wearing those black rubber bracelets. My sisters and I wanted them more than anything,
but we could never afford them.One day, my dad came home with a bunch of O-rings he took from the mechanic in all different sizes for us to use as bracelets. They were covered in oil, and most of them were way too small to fit on our wrists, but it was SO SWEET of him that we forced them around our wrists until our hands turned blue (and black with oil) and proudly paraded around the neighborhood.
