Comparison & Contrast
By Eric Sissom
English Composition I
December 9, 2005
The young boy in “The Jacket” did not like wearing a jacket his mother brought him, which reminded me of a story my father told me about a bicycle he did not want to ride when he was five years old. The bike was old, used, and rusty. The similarity is my father disliked that bike as the boy disliked that jacket. The boy asked his mother for a biker style jacket, “black leather and silver studs, with enough belts to hold down a small town” (249). My father asked his dad (my grandfather) for a new bicycle for his sixth birthday because a neighborhood kid his age received a brand new shiny bicycle for Christmas and my father learned to ride it.
One day, an old rusty bicycle with two dry rotted flat tires showed up on the back porch. My father was very disappointed and said to his dad, “I don’t want that old bicycle; I want a new one like my friend.” His dad replied, “This is a fine bicycle. It was made right after the war and it is a lot heavier duty then the bicycles they make today. It is a genuine Western Flyer; it just needs a little work.” He continued saying, “I never had a bicycle when I was a kid and always wanted one. If you don’t want it after we fix it up, we can sell it.” The boy in “The Jacket” came home from school and discovered a jacket in his bedroom that was an ugly color of “day-old guacamole” (249). The boy was so frightened by the look of that jacket that he “approached the jacket slowly, as if it were a stranger whose hand I had to shake” (249) and he “wanted to cry because it was so ugly and so big that I knew I’d have to wear it a long time” (249). He didn’t complain to his mother about the jacket at first. My dad complained to his father about the bicycle right away.
My father and grandfather worked on that old bicycle, sanding the fenders, and repainting the entire bike fire engine red with white stripes. They also greased the bearings and oiled the chain. The tires were replaced. The chrome spokes and rims were polished. The bicycle was like brand new by the time of his sixth birthday, as the neighborhood kids thought. When the boy in “The Jacket” walked around the playground at school wearing that ugly jacket, the other kids laughed at him. “Frankie T., the playground terrorist, pushed me to the ground and told me to stay there until recess was over. My best friend, Steve Negrete, ate an apple while looking at me, and the girls turned away to whisper on the monkey bars” (250).
My father was happier than if it was a brand new bicycle because of the hard work involved. He rode that bicycle until he out grew it about four years later. The boy wore the jacket for three years and blamed it for bad grades he received in school. “I wore that thing for three years until the sleeves grew short and my forearms stuck out like the necks of turtles” (251). But he was glad he had a jacket to keep warm as my father was glad to have a bicycle to ride rather than no bicycle at all.
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Grade: 93/100 | This essay was written by Eric Sissom, autism@ericsissom.com