Editor’s Note: In February Kris Hill spoke to students in Global Academy and Outdoor Academy, both integrated programs for 10th graders, who at the time were working on website writing projects for the academy programs. These were among the best pieces as selected by their peers. Enjoy!

My Modern Family

By Tara Ferguson

There are many TV shows today trying to reflect what the average modern family is like, but unless you have been in one you don’t understand what it’s really like. Some current modern families are mixed racial families, blended families, gay families, different aged parents, and many more. Here is a look into my modern family. 

My family started out as a traditional family but when I was three years old it changed. My parents got divorced because my dad came to terms that he is gay. It was a hard transition for my two older sisters who were 6 and 9-years-old at the time but for me thats just what I’ve known my whole life. I have no recollection of my parents being together or having family events with them being at each others side. My very first memories are of moving into an apartment with my mom and two sisters after the divorce and helping my dad move into his new house with his boyfriend.

When people hear stories like that they can’t believe what they hear. They think it’s very strange and don’t quite understand how that happened. When my dad told my mom he was gay and they got divorced my mom couldn’t believe or understand what happened, but when she talked to other people it ended up that many other families have had the same experience.

Due to the fact that I have no recollection of my parents being together, for me, my whole life I’ve grown up with my dad being gay. When I was little to me there was no difference between my family and other families. Of course I knew there weren’t a lot of other kids with gay parents but I still had a mom and a dad, so to me it was like another divorced family.

When I was little I didn’t talk about it much but as the years went on I started telling some close friends. As a little kid it was very hard to make friends who were accepting of it. I remember when one girl wouldn’t be my friend because her parents told her that it’s not right to be gay and that she couldn’t be my friend just because of my dad being gay. That made growing up very difficult because I felt like it was my fault that some people wouldn’t be my friend due to my dad being gay.

Furthermore, it was hard for my dads family to understand and figure out how to think about it. His only real blood brother stopped talking to him and would not let his kid be around my dad thinking that my dad would “turn them gay.” That caused me to not get to know my family really well because I only saw them a few times. I have not seen my uncle since I was eight years old and that was at my grandmas funeral. I know that the reason I never see my uncle and I haven’t gotten to know him is because he doesn’t support my dad being gay, but it feels like he didn’t care about me or my sisters and that he never wanted a relationship with us.

At times I wonder, why me? Why did I have to be the girl with the gay dad? All the time I think about what it would be like if my parents were still together, or if my dad wasn’t gay. But when I really think about it I’m glad my dad is gay and that my family is the way that it is. Of course I don’t like that it’s hard to have a gay dad due to the fact people judge me for it. But I love my dad and I wouldn’t want to change him or anything that I’ve gone through due to him being gay because that has taught me to not judge on where people come from and who they are and that has made me the person I am today.

My Trust in Sawdust

By Kaitlin Ellsworth

My parents taught me growing up to respect other people’s decisions, whether I agreed with it or not. Whether someone gets a piece of body art that I personally don’t like isn’t something I can change. All I can do is treat them the same way I would want someone to treat me. With respect. Of course, maybe my parents would have had a different point of view if my uncle hadn’t become a tattoo artist. His work blows me away every time I see a piece; it’s hard to not appreciate every piece. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t tattoos that I personally wouldn’t get, but that doesn’t mean that they are bad tattoos. There is no such thing as a bad tattoo. There are only different tattoos, and each is beautiful to someone or everyone.

My uncle taught me to be myself, even if people don’t agree with it. Many people told him he wouldn’t make it as a tattoo artist.

“That isn’t a job! How will you support your children or your wife?”

The funny thing is, my uncle does a fantastic job at every piece that he creates. He knows that it’s permanent, and that it means something to that person, but it also means something to him. Each tattoo he does represents how he overcame the dirty looks and the snide comments about what he wanted to do for work. Honestly, I can’t see my uncle doing anything else. Picturing him behind a desk and typing away on a computer for hours every day makes me laugh. That’s not for him — he was made to do tattoos. So, he opened his own shop in Grover Beach called Sink or Swim Tattoo. It is probably the coolest place I’ve ever been to. It stands for his love for tattoos and his hope for society to finally appreciate them as much as every tattoo artist does. I don’t really know how he got his name Sawdust, but I definitely hope I hear that story sometime. So, not only is my uncle, in my opinion, the best tattoo artist, but he’s an amazing father to his little girl, Berlyn and boy, Dashiel, and a wonderful husband to his wife, Larella. I really couldn’t ask for a cooler family. I’m thankful to have such a supportive group that are always there.

Take it from someone who has been around tattoos for as long as I can remember, tattoos are for those who are strong enough to bare their story on their skin. Some are too weak for it, some don’t have a story to tell, some prefer to tell their stories in other way, and that’s fine, but I speak for every serious tattoo artist when I say: what I do with my body is no one’s business but mine.

Tattoos are for expressing a point; my point. Not yours, not anyone else’s, so stop worrying about my future and what I will do, because I will find a way, just like my uncle did.