I recently went through a bit of an identity crisis. It was nothing traumatic. It didn’t even create a wave worth mentioning. But since you and I are always getting to know each other through these stories of mine, I thought I’d tell you about it.

This all started in the fall of 1956. This scrawny little kid was brought kicking and screaming into the world. Baseball was being broadcast over the radio waves. The New York Yankees took the Brooklyn Dodgers in 7 games. Don Larsen pitched a perfect game 5 in that series, and the Dodgers tucked tail and ran for California after the next season.

Did you get that? A perfect game. With more than 150 years of baseball under our belts, and somewhere close to 240,000 professional games played over that span, a perfect game has been thrown only 24 times in baseball history. 27 batters faced in a row. No one reaches base. Game over.

That is how my life started and is probably why I love baseball. In fact, I take partial credit for the Braves beating the pants off the Yankees to win the 1957 World Series.

I was a farm raised kid. Son of John and Helen. My first semi-solid food was grits, and my favorite cereal was Captain Crunch. When I was old enough, I played shortstop for the Hampton Hawks. Mama came to see every game and liberally applied mercurochrome to every scrape.

My entire life revolved around that little piece of world at 1503 Hampton-Locust Grove Road.

My Dad was the one who taught me about work and responsibility.

It’s summertime. We’re sitting at the kitchen table before God is up. Dad is stirring an ice cube into his coffee, the spoon tinkling against the inside of the cup. It’s so quiet the only noticeable sound is the buzz of the fluorescent light and the scrape of a fork against the plate. A half-chewed piece of bacon is hanging out of my mouth. My eyes are closed.

“I want you to spend the morning in the garden. We can’t let the crabgrass get ahead of us.”

“Ye’sir.”

“And when you mow the grass, be sure to get the clippers out and do the trimming.”

“Ye’sir.”

You know what I’m talking about. Hands and knees. Clippers that look like sheep shearers. The mower weighed as much as I did, and after pushing it around the yard for hours, I got down on the ground eyeball to eyeball with the dirt. I clipped tufts of grass left around the lamp post, next to the front step, around the base of the trees, the clothesline, the swing set, and under the fence.

This is not one of those “look at me, I walked up hill both ways” kind of things. I’m just saying that my dad expected me to work. I’m pretty sure he worked harder as a kid than I ever did, and that his dad expected that of him. Work between a father and son becomes one of those defining experiences. Teaching. Learning. Shaping.

And it’s not just skills you learn. There’s a way of looking at the world, a way of looking at life that just kind of seeps into your very being.

When you’re a kid you fight it. You disagree with it. You call it stupid. You laugh about it with your buddies. You mock it. And you swear you’ll never act or think like that.

You’re convinced that your mom and dad just don’t get it. “It’s not like it was when you were a kid,” you say to them with smug confidence. I can’t swear I said it, but I know I thought it. But I know that I’ve heard my kids say it to me.

Then, all of a sudden, one day you wake up from your teenage, youthful, smart-@$$, self-induced coma and you remember stuff. You remember your dad saying stuff to you before you went out at night with your friends. Stuff like, “Remember you’re a Chappell. That name stands for something that matters.”

You remember smirking at the idea, but now that your own kid is staring back at you with the car keys in hand, about to leave the house to go god-knows-where, to do god-knows-what, you find yourself repeating those ancient old-fashioned words. “Remember. You’re a Chappell. That’s a respected name that’s been around for a while. Don’t screw it up.”

This is where my identity crisis comes into play. Not a lot of background required. It’s just that a week or two ago I ran into an old friend who said to me, “You don’t look like a Chappell.”

This person knows my family, so I just couldn’t blow off the comment. It stayed with me. I got to thinking about all those years in that house. All those days on that farm. All those trips to the mountains or the beach. All those lessons. All the embarrassing stuff I did. All the baseballs I caught in the front yard. All the family that came to visit. All the Chappell stuff that turned me into who I am.

I know I don’t have the high cheek bones like my dad and my Aunt Mary Eliza. Cherokee Indian genes I’m told. But I’ve got the hazel-green eyes that belonged to my dad. It’s odd that his turned blue as he got older. My mama always said that I had D’daddy’s hair, which I think my cousin Bobby must have, too.

I’m pretty sure I have my mama’s penchant for orderliness. My dad’s tenacity for work. When I laugh, sometimes I hear my dad. When I drive with one arm draped over the steering wheel and I look at my hand, I see his hand.

How do you know what a Chappell looks like?

The faith I learned and that I now own for myself came from my parents. It’s part of my heritage to lean on the Creator within the created order of things. Rain. Sun. Good. Bad. Tears. Laughter. It can all be taken with a dose of joy if you make up your mind to see it that way.

Money. There’s a good one. I’m as tight as Scrooge when it comes to spending a nickel on myself. I don’t need much. I can fix the old one. I can make do with what I have. I ain’t spending “that” for something I don’t really need. But if my kids or neighbors or friends need help, I pretty much don’t care what it cost me.

Heritage is a funny thing. The older you get the more you realize its significance. Roots. Reasons. Stories. Events that shape not only who you are but how you look at life itself.

I learned that from my dad and I’m guessing it is a deeply imbedded Chappell trait.

The next time somebody says to me, “You don’t look like a Chappell,” I’ll know better. I won’t stew over it and won’t try to over-analyze it.

I’ll just smile. I’ll hear my dad saying, “Remember who you are.”

And I’ll tell them that looks are deceiving.