Originally Posted by Minsky  I had a shocking run in with the ‘N’ about five or six years ago, just before my younger brother was getting ready to graduate from high school. My parents planned to throw him a huge graduation party- since my Dad’s a high school teacher, a big chunk of the faculty were going to show up, and that’s already on top of the various hordes of friends and neighbors that were coming.
Our family trend was to wait until the day of a party to begin the massive task of cleaning the house and yard, and this event was to be no exception. The 1.5-acre lawn needed to be mowed and edged, the leaves raked, the pool cleaned, the floors mopped, the furniture dusted, and so forth. Since the house would end up filthy after the party anyway, it was a zero sum game. We were rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and we knew it.
The ‘incident’ began innocently enough. I remember cleaning the pool and hearing my Dad yelling at my brother in the front yard: “What are you doing? You haven’t raked anything! There aren’t even any piles! What, are you just shuffling the leaves around?” Knowing my brother, this was likely. A half-hour later, I remember being in the living room, and watching my Dad explode into the house, his arms flailing, exasperated, turning to my Mom: “Fuck, Jesus, Fuck! I found him leaning on a tree and playing his Game Boy! I don’t know how to get this kid moving! We only have a few hours until people start showing up, and he won’t rake the goddamn leaves!” After a few minutes, I walked out into the front lawn and found my brother, rake in hand, staring at something in the trees above. “Dad is gonna destroy you if you don’t rake these leaves,” I said. He shrugged, and we began a ten minute conversation about Killer Instinct on the N64.
Our Dad eventually walked out onto the front porch and came toward us, quickly at first, then, as the realization that no raking had been done washed over him, slowly and deliberately. His lips pursed and fists clenched. For a moment, I thought I would finally get to see a beating. He stepped onto the bed of leaves, gesturing at them with outstretched hands the way one would gesture toward a dead baby or something, and, pointing at my brother, screamed with all of his power:
“NIIIGGERRR!”
The booming sound of temporary hatred for one’s son pierced the clouds above and engulfed the neighborhood. My brother dropped the rake, and we stood silently, mouths wide open, shocked at hearing him say what we’ve never heard him say before that, and what we’ve never heard him say since. I think it was the absolute worst possible word he could imagine at that given time, so in a way, it makes him kind of un-racist. Oh yeah, my brother’s white. I forgot to mention that everybody’s white in this story.
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