Ethan Hightower "Holes Full of Dirt'

I’m a sucker for stories with good titles. As such, I immediately had high expectations for this piece, and I was not let down. What the title implies, at least for me, is the idea of calling something that it is not. Is a hole full of dirt really a hole? By definition, no. And getting to the heart of this story, I think this is what Jeremy discovers about himself: that he is trying to be something that he is not. By trying to fill in the holes in his driveway and impress Ashlyn with his work ethic, Jeremy is essentially trying to bury his adolescent awkwardness and smother the parts of him that he doesn’t like. When he is foiled in his attempt to do so, however, he has a great moment of honesty with himself in the middle of page 6.  “I had trouble driving this truck because I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to make Ashyln like me, because she just didn’t. That was something she had to do on her own, and no matter how nice this road looked at the end of the day, I would still be myself, stumbling through awkward conversations.” As a reader, this was like a gourmet feast of character development; there are so many layers, so many wonderfully honest layers in this short section that make the whole story come to life in one fell swoop. As if this weren’t enough, this section is quickly followed up by an interaction with Jeremy’s father that puts this moment, this realization in a larger context. Despite Jeremy’s mistake with the truck, his father still tells him he is proud of him and laughs off the transient nature of the truck anyway.

            This final interaction builds this story up beyond a mere relation of events, but rather depicts a journey of a boy growing into a man. When I finished this piece I knew two things: Jeremy is beginning to accept who he is, and Jeremy has a father who will be his unwavering supporter. This made the story so much more meaningful than some “another day in the life of a high-schooler” piece, and I really enjoyed the simplicity and subtlety of it all. The only shadow of a suggestion I have for this piece is perhaps to revise some of the dialogue between Ashlyn and Jeremy in the first couple of pages. There were only a few spots that seemed like they could use a little work (such as some of the tags and Ashlyn’s question about Jeremy’s age), but overall, this is a very well-written piece that was incredibly enjoyable for me to read.