Jack Hitt
Appearances
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
Anyway, we had declared it to be our land. We were squatters. And so we started painting things on the wall. And one of us painted a naked woman. And one of us wrote his name and then loves. And then the girl he had a thing for at that time. And that's how we got caught because he wrote his name on the wall. And then I wrote all these bad words. I just wrote every bad word I could think of.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And so I came home one day and the police came to my house and told my parents or called my father at work or something. And anyway, he came home early from work. And he sat me down in his big study and said, you know, I understand you painted some words on a wall. And I was like, Oh my God, it's burst into tears. You know, I was just beyond, uh, control.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
My father never cursed, at least not in front of us. And he was very strict about language. And so he asked me what words I, we painted, I painted on the wall. And, you know, I think I choked out H-E double hockey sticks or something. And, you know, he kind of looked down. Very grave indeed. Anything else? I was like, yeah. That was just the warm up.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And so then I said, you know, I painted the other words. I can't say them. I can't say them. And then he said, tell me what it started with.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
he's gonna get it out of me so i coughed up the letter s and he was just his eyes blazed and he bowed his head oh my god anything else and i was i could not be contained i was wailing around on the sofa he said there's only one word left and yeah i painted it and he was just i mean i think he was actually thunderstruck And then he sat there in silence for a few minutes.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And then he looked up at me and he said, he said, now you have to understand, my father comes from the rural area, marries the Southern Belle in Charleston, South Carolina. It's a marriage of two kinds of families in the South. And he said, son, I've worked all my life to make sure that when you or your sisters or your brother walk down the street, people say, there goes a hit.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
They're good people. I don't think anybody, anything that anybody in this family has done has damaged that reputation as much as you have today. And he said, that is your punishment. You may go now. You know, I was 11. Wow. I was just, I was floored, you know. I asked him, I think, to spank me. Because, of course, part of me wanted an explosion that would end it.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
But he said, when he dismissed me from the room, he said, you know, this has been your punishment. And then, of course, a couple of months later, he dies. And that's one of my last memories is him telling me that. Do you think he was being sincere? Well, I'll tell you. Years later... We had a little family reunion. I might have been 20. I was in college. And all my siblings got together.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
They were all married at this point. We dismissed all the in-laws to go see the movies. And the five of us stayed up really late talking. And I don't think we'd ever really talked about our father.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
in any deep way since he had died and i started telling that story and i had never told that story because i was ashamed of it damn it was the black mark on the family that i had done this right and i i couldn't bring to i'd never told anybody that story and i started telling the story and All my sisters start wailing with laughter.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And then they all start telling the story that what they had done that had prompted essentially the exact same speech. Like one of them had been caught shoplifting in Atlanta and he had to fly there and get her. And it was just a terrible story. I'd never heard that one before either. And I thought, well, painting a few bad words on a wall, that's nothing compared to shoplifting in Atlanta.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
I think I was the only one who didn't know. I mean, they're much older than I am. I'm a mistake, right? So my oldest sister is 16 years older than I am. So I think what was kind of moving about that whole encounter was that all of them had long ago forgotten their particular crime that had prompted Daddy to give them the big reputation speech.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
But, you know, when I brought it up, it suddenly, for all of them, that all flooded back. I mean, it just created this great little moment where we all suddenly realized we were, you know, the whole family was just so defined by my father's rather Baptist sense of morality.