Day 39

Name: Cassity Smith

Profession: Student, Horizon High School

Location: Her home in Phoenix, Arizona

Question: Why are you where you are?

Answer: I don’t know; I’m still figuring it out

What I love most about my youngest sister, Cassity Smith, is her ability to mislead everyone she meets by appearing somewhat simpleminded and misguided. In fact, sometimes she has even me convinced until she accidentally lets slip her brilliance, at which time I’m reminded.

Today’s interview began with her news about an episode of MTV’s “My Super Sweet Sixteen,” a reality show that recently featured an outrageous birthday bash hosted for musical artist P. Diddy’s son. From there, I tried asking her about what she values in life.

After a fifteen-second pause, “I don’t know! Make something up for me!”

I refused, so she eventually settled on “my friends and my family,” a reasonable answer in its own right. I asked her if she had any special memories she’d like to share of these people, obviously an integral part of who she is.

“Why do you ask me such difficult questions?!” she replied.

Once she gave in—extracting information from a bored 16-year-old is never easy—she livened up and told me about her future plans.

“I want to try and get my Master’s degree, and I want to create my own company,” she said. “I want to do something for underprivileged kids. I’m trying to give them something that’s not available to the average kid.”

Smith got her inspiration from her Youth Leadership group, which meets every other week to learn from people who have made a difference in the Phoenix community.

“We learned about stereotyping and all of that kind of stuff. There were these black kids that were talking about how it sucks because people will follow them around stores. They were pretty upset about it. I wanted to start something that actually meant something to underprivileged kids to make them feel like not everybody’s like that. They need to look for something good in life,” she said.

She has also had the opportunity to speak with the creator of First Fridays, a monthly event hosted by the City of Phoenix in which the downtown area’s art scene comes alive. Galleries and museums are free and open to the public, artists line the streets with their products, musicians play in treetops, on street corners, or on elaborate stages. Thousands of people gather to watch magicians, grab a cheap bite to eat, and catch the art show that lasts only twelve nights a year.

“There’s a street and all these little houses; well, we went down and learned about all the houses, and who’s been there, and the artists, how hard it was for them to live down there because they wanted to tear all those houses down to create the Cardinals Stadium. All the artists were just under lease, so all the artists started buying the houses so it would be harder for them to bribe them out. They wanted to become closer with the community, anyway, so that’s when they started First Fridays,” she said. “We learned all about that and we got to see all the bad parts of town and all the good parts of town. People think Downtown is a really bad place, but it’s really not. We went to a bunch of little business owner’s places. We went to Stinkweeds, a record store, and we talked to her about how she started her business. It was pretty interesting.”

Smith admitted somewhat ashamedly that she was only a member of the leadership group because she got caught at a party her parents didn’t know about.

“The people are really cool that I go with, but I have to wake up every other Saturday at seven until four, so it’s kind of annoying,” she said. “Mom and Dad said it wasn’t my punishment, but I doubt they would have made me do it if I didn’t get into trouble.”

Though she’s had her fair share of fun outside of her mother and father’s approval, Smith said her richest experience was attendance at a summer camp in the Massachusetts Berkshires for eight summers. She plans to return to this camp once she is old enough.

“You grow up a lot there and you meet people from all over the world,” she said. “You’re not just stuck in Arizona. You don’t just know about Arizona. You’re learning about the world and how people work.”