How it feels to be raised by a superhero by Auris Arias

 Toastmasters speech for the contest, 4/3/2021

Hi! I'm Auris Arias and I want to tell you how it feels to be raised by a superhero.

My superhero, I mean, the person that raised me goes by the name of Andrea Candelaria. 

She was a child of 11, the little one. She was brave, she was wild and she somehow didn't follow anyone's rules and didn't end up in jail.  (PAUSE for effect). She almost killed someone once, so trust me, it was a possibility.

My aunt was bold. She was the kind of person that would never back down, from a fight, a challenge, a nuance of disrespect. Even to this day, she is a greeter at Walmart and when people want to diss her they ask her, where are you from? and she says "I don't care"

I laughed and explained to her she should say NJ. She told me they know she lives in NJ, they want to know her background so that they could fault her for not knowing perfect English.

When I was growing up, there was no threat that could come that she could not handle. She scared of thieves (this she did after us 3 went to sleep, me my sister and my cousin). She would take this big blade that in Dominican Republic we would call, MACHETE. It is this big (SIGNAL WITH HAND). We lived in a place where the hallway is part of the outside, connecting us from room to room. At the end of the house, next to the kitchen was the outside area where the wall would cut in half and you could look out into your neighbor's yard (our neighbor had a jungle back there that came with a beast that I later learned was her dog).  My aunt after a long day would look out there at the sky and the stars and she would later on tell me, she would threaten the thieves.

They wanted to come in so what she did was she would take the MACHETE and she would rub it against the concrete. It would make a scary, metal blade against concrete sound. I imagine it would go like this (IMITATE SOUND). This sound let the thieves know that if they came to this household, there would be a fight. It would not be an easy steal. 

In the morning, she would wake up and we had the routine of us getting ready for school, 2 girls in pigtails to make and breakfast and uniforms to put on and then we would walk together holding hands in the fresh hot weather Caribbean summer all year long weather days. And I knew what love was and I knew that all was good. It was later on in life she confessed to me her nights protecting us and the dangers that a superhero has to keep the city from experiencing.

It bedazzles me because she made it look so easy. She always knew what to do. So how do you know if you are being raised by a superhero? 1. they make you feel invincible. Their fearlessness and willingness to take on any challenge makes you feel like you can do the same too. The  way this showed up in our household was through our cousin, he really thought he was Spiderman and would jump at us once he got up really high in the wall. For me, my aunt continually pushed me to be the best student and the best dancer at any competition and I succeeded in both. 

2. Superheros make it look easy. My aunt made raising 3 kids, 2 of them not her own but her sister's kids, she made it look easy. We didnt konw about the thieves and the dangers that she protected us from. But what we did know is that when she was around, we were always safe.

3. Superheros believe in you, and therefore you learn to believe in yourself. My aunt saw something in me that I did not see in myself. Due to this, she forced me to do things outside of my comfort zone: sing in front of people, take part of a fashion show at 9 years old, be the best student in my class every year and have pigtails that everyone in my grade was envious of.

At the end of it all, I now have a son and I am raising him the way she raised me: without fear, raising up to every challenge and with the routines and disciplines that build character. My name is Auris Arias and this is my story. I know what it's like to be raised by a superhero, and if you look at the way you were raised, please thank the superheros that raised you.