Mar. 25th, 2009 at 9:05 PM
NOTE!!!
Prior to reading this be aware that this wasn't meant to be posted online. I don't know anywhere else to post it while still maintaining it private in a sense. I still welcome anyone to read it and leave comments. I'm aware of the grammatical/spelling errors. I will make a better effort of making my future posts more pleasing to the eyes. Thanks.
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yeah, life is quite the trip. one memory that stands out is sundays. i don't really remember where my family lived at the time but it didn't really change the sunday routine. my mom would wake up the siblings, my dad still resting in bed. we would immediately get ready, fighting over the restroom and whatever else prevented us from earning that shot-gun spot in the car. before any of us would finish my dad mysteriously dissapears from his room and reappears in his t-bird, waiting for the rest of us to finish. everyone is eventually done and we head to church.
it's amazing how many people can fit in this car: my mom on the passenger, my 3 sisters sharing the backseat with me, and my little brother comfortly sitting in the armrest between my parents. as we drove down la everything seems to be intact from the last drive- beat up streets, people in the same spot doing whatever they can do to earn that same spot the next week, the sun turning the t-bird to a furnance, and my mom playing spanish music on the drive. sometimes we would detour to mcdonalds for some breakfast. at church we were a big part of it. my dad helped start the church and my sisters and i sang songs for them. we also made the majority of sunday school. after church we would go to this nice little salvadorean restaurant. afterwards we go home and enjoy the rest of the weekend.
that was then. now i'm 21 years old. i got my own place in long beach, after my dad kicked me out. i've been unemployed since november and i really haven't done school for a few years. if anything this is the most i've ever written on my own free will. and the one thing that runs through my mind in these troublesome times is those sunday memories. i miss how young and innocent i was back then, unaware of my dangerous surroundings (especially in la). unaware of the hardships my parents faced raising 5 children, unaware of how my mother raised me and my sister proir to meeting the man i would call my dad.
it's safe to say i've been through a lot in my life. cali has a tendancy to place a lot of the youth in very difficult scenarios. my hardships were rooted from poverty. growing up my family moved from place to place to find somewhere we could afford to stay. we moved from la (several times) to lynwood, to compton, and finally long beach. in those years i still carried that child-like mentality, completely unaware of my parents struggle. that soon changed in lynwood.
my dad was real close to churches. if anything the churches that helped us out pretty much influenced our moving arrangements. the church my dad worked for at the time in lynwood gave him a pretty cool deal in the place we lived in. we went to their christian school, my dad helped with the services, taught the community english, and arranged interventions for gang members. one day my pops feel very ill. my mom called 911 and my dad was soon taken to the martin luther king hospital. anyone in the l.a. area that's read this far probably knows how bad of a place this "hospital" actually is. my dad almost died there. then he was taken to another hospital where his life was saved. he returned home and i just remember being glad he made it.
weeks later my parents are waken by a door knock. within the hour my dad is in cuffs and my family is sitting in a bench outside. the church has been rented to another church member and she wanted to kick us out the house we were renting. what i distinctively remember is the amount of support we recieved from the community as they began to encirle the area, donating what they could to my mother who was grieving too much to mumble any sort of thank you. i remember us still in our pajamas waiting to hear word from my father. efter what felt like a lifetime he came back and told my mother that we were okay. he spoke to the owner of the property and he decided to allow us to stay there. i would assume that after that moment my dad decided that he needed to get a job that could help us leave lynwood behind. fortunately he did, and we soon moved to compton, only that he wasn't coming with us...
after only being out the hospital for a few months after a life-threating surgery, my dad soon found work in massachusetts. he had no luck finding anything in the area. with the help of yet another chuch, we moved to compton. after a few weeks my father and tio took flight. i remember driving down the freeway as we headed to lax. i remember being the most emotional one of the group other than my mom. i was the oldest, and i finally began to see how fukked up life can be. even to this day i still get lost in my thoughts when i pass that lax sign on the freeway. he hugged us, told me that i'm the man of the house, to take care of the fam, and he went his way. the ride back home to compton was quiet other than the sobs of the family my dad left behind.
compton isn't as bad as many people assume. i did not know anything about compton prior to moving there. as an adult i can say the streets had the compton feel. the crackhouse was down the block, i would hit the floor at the sound of gunshots, i would see people get robbed, the usual. i guess you can say that i wasn't aware of it because my parents did a good job sheltering me from this. or maybe it was the sense that i've grown accustomed to this surrounding. either way compton was cool.
i still held that child-like mentality. granted that i was now more aware of or scenario, i didn't give it much thought when it came to my mother. as i reminecse i can honestly say that the sacrifice my dad did going to massachusetts to find something better for us was nothing compared to the sacrifice my mom did raising us in compton. she would walk my sisters and brother to elementary school every day. she would wish me a great day as i walk to walton elementary school down the block. she would order pizza and let us play video games on sunday as she would watch her comedy show. and she would let us play with the kids in the block. i didn't give it much thought back then but i'm sure we all gave her a hard time, and i appreciate the fact that she still managed to make it work for us. even then i conpemplated running away, making life easier for the fam. but my mom did a great job keeping us together.
we would have to lie about my dad actually living with us and explain why he was never around. or better yet why we have a t-bird in the garage that apparently never been moved. many people were suspicious at times until my dad would make his visits. he would bring many things from boston. one gift he brought in particular was a yellow raincoat, which birthed the nickname "yellow" when i wore it to school. he took me out on a father-and-son day and introduced me to gaming via the gamboy color. he would go to my middle school and speak to my teachers, proud of my nerdiness and good grades. then i would be re-introduced to lax after two weeks, say good-bye to him again, and head back to being the man of the house.
school was cool (heh, rhyming). i was quite the schoolboy, probably the smartest guy at my school. with that being said you can only assume that i didn't have a huge circle of friends. i was also not the riches and that doesn't help much either. i had these pair of school pants that had an interesting assortment of blue patches to cover holes and tears. and a rolling backpack. and a yellow raincoat with matching pants? yeah, you get the point.
it was fun. i got into every lil thing that everyone else got into- pokemon cards, pokemon game, marbles, yo-yo's. and then i played the guy games, bb bridges, tochos, murder ball, carrems. i had my crushes, got into my fair share of fights, and eventually got promoted to high school. many friends went to other schools. one of my good friends moved to long beach. i ended up going to the closest high school in the area- compton high.
at this time my dad was officially with us. his plans in boston were unsuccesful and he found a good job near long beach. once again the church that helped my dad out decided it was time to kick him out of this place. so he looked around for yet another place to move into. i went to compton high prior to the beginning of the school year to take some classes. the school was located near the heart of compton with the police station down the block. across my bus station stood a builing that offered root beer floats and marvel vs. capcom. i managed to come up on money in some very shameful ways and my daily routine was established prior to me attending compton high during the school year. i only went to compton high for a month but what i experienced was very compton-esque. someone got ran over, fights, riots, walk-outs, death; just imagine your typical hood movie portrayal of school. i had my lil circle of friends, my chick, it was another day in compton.
we moved again to long beach. it was easier to move this time. as much as i miss the neighbors or friends i was a bit excited bout starting again. we got a nice apartment near downtown long beach. my dad's job was in the area and the elementary school was close for the young ones. my sisters took the school bus to their middle school and i was left. the the time long beach schools were overflooded with students. many schools reached their limit of students and were no longer accepting anymore. the closest school to where i lived was polytechnic high school, or something like that. they were also overflooded. the only other schools accepting students that were close to me were milikan or a new school that hasen't been named yet. the other one was closer and my dad enrolled me to renaissance.
renaissance was far from a high school. the school was not suppose to officially open until the following year so there were many things wrong with the school: no/shattered windows, no library, no electricity in some classes, and lack of teachers. our spanish teacher was teaching history. the librarian had no library. we even had a coach with no coach to sport. and on top of that this school, which at most held about 600 student total, was also housing 3 other programs: t9 for the students that didn't pass the 8th grade, reid was high school for the gangstas, and cal-safe was a program for teen mothers to attend school while their children were in the baby-sitting area.
at fatboi begging not to be banned true house nikka
