Undergraduate / "my dad is Superman" - about someone who has made an impact on your life [7]

This is my first essay and I need criticism and revision help, please!

I guess you could say that my dad is Superman.
But I don't mean that in a Clark Kent, leap-tall-buildings-i-a-single-bound way. He doesn't have super strength, he can't melt things with his pupils, fly, or see through walls (though I'm pretty sure he has eyes in the back of his head). No, my dad is superhuman in ways much more amazing than that.

He's the constant rock in my life. He's the man who'd bought me my first bike and spent hours on end teaching me how to ride, the man who pick me up and carry me inside when I fell asleep on car rides, the man who'd point to this little ugly duckling and declare proudly, "That's my daughter".

My dad is my hero, not just because of the sacrifices he's made for me, but because he's shaped who I am. How I walk, how I talk, how I carry myself overall. My dad always told me "You gotta walk with dignity! Speak with a purpose! You know why, Monster? Because your'e a Washington! We're a poor but proud people." I remember at thirteen years old this sounded like a whole lot to do. Walk with dignity? Talk with purpose? Did that mean not using slang and keeping your back straight and gut in? But looking at my dad, with his salt and pepper beard and laugh lines, I knew what he meant: carry yourself like you're somebody so others will know that you're somebody, too. I knew my dad had always wanted to give the best to me and my siblings because he'd never had a chance when he was a boy. Growing up in a low-class family in the south in the 1950s, "easy living" isn't exactly the word you'd use to describe my dad's boyhood. He and his brothers lived out in the country out in the deep in the south. Racism and poverty plagued his childhood and most of his teenhood.

But throughout all the hardships, he's never given up and that reason, among many other, is why my dad is so important to me. I look at that old man, at my old man, and I see a reason to be all I can be and so much more. I see cold hard proof that it doesn't matter where you came from, just matters where you're going.

When it comes down to it, I guess I really do believe my dad is Superman. I can't think of anyone who can go through the things he did and still find something to genuinely smile about. I hope others have as good a role model as I've had for the past seventeen years and beyond; I hope others have their own Superman in their lives.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, that's my dad, and I wouldn't have him any other way.

Too laid back? I know there are many errors in this. Help is greatly appreciated!