Your views here will be MUCH different than mine, but no flames will be taken. I'll laugh at you for not being able to open yourself to new things.

Thanks for the reviews so far.

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Okay, so my life didn't start out too bad. I was born in the US; I'm a legal citizen, but who cares? Ms. Smeeth is such a dull sometimes. I mean, do you really wanna be reading about my baby years? I can hardly remember them, so where's the point? Exactly. There isn't one.

Moving on to "newer" stuff. I lived in Florida until I turned six and moved to Alabama.

In Florida my life was tough. Real tough.

My mother was in the kitchen, making lunch. I ran up to her, yelling:

"¡Mama, mama, mama!" ~*~"Mom, mom, mom!"~*~

"¿Sí, bebé?" ~*~"Yes, baby?"~*~

"¿Cuándo estamos comiendo?" ~*~"When are we eating?"~*~

"Soon, José."

I loved it when my mom spoke English. She didn't use it much, and I knew very little words.

"Soon?"

"Soon."

Ever the happy go lucky kid I was then, I went outside to enjoy the hot Florida weather. If anyone knows anything about this state, the number one thing they should know: kidnapping. My family didn't know what it was, so I played in the yard, unwatched. Unsafe. A group kids several years older than me came up and started speaking in English. I've forgotten what they said, but one way or the other they got me to go "play" with them. I can't call it play, since they were so much older, so, yeah.

As I was "hanging out" one of the boys pulled a small brown bag out of his pocket with a bunch of straws. Several of the others cheered.

"¿Qué usted está haciendo?" ~*~"What are you doing?"~*~

They stared at me blankly.

"Watch!" said a girl. I understood this word, so, I watched. She took a straw and opened her hand, palm facing up. The boy with the bag pulled out a few pinches of stuff from the bag and placed it in the girl's waiting hand. She placed the straw up to a nostrol and blocked the other with a finger. With a quick snort she sucked in the power on her hand.

I was confosed. I was offered the bag and a straw, but I shook my head. I didn't get the point of this.

One day, I walked into the house and asked my mom, in broken English:

"What heroin?"

"¿Heroína?"

"Sí, mama."

My mother flipped. She started yelling in English strange words I couldn't understand, and can't remember anymore. I stared at her in fright. She calmed down quickly and told me what heroin was. Basically: something very bad and to stay away from it. Like that did any good.

After that day I didn't talk about any sort of drug in the house again. The older kids left me alone once they saw I wasn't going to try their "fun stuff" as they called it. My mom forgot my question on heroin. I turned five. Again I was brought into a group of people older than me. They snuffed, smoked, and injected.

And I learned about something new: Sex.

I didn't do it, but I could watch. People went at it in the middle of a room sometimes, all everyone else did was laugh.

That's the way to learn about sex, right? Seeing high people do it on someone's dining table.

I didn't tell my parents anything, they didn't ask. All parents should ask questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How? Always. My parents didn't, look at what happened to me.

All through my life as a five year old I watched people get high, fuck, beat each other up, handle money and drugs. Sure, there was more than that, like my home life and school, but I can't remember much on those subjects. Once, I watched in silence as the "leader" of the "gang" I had been made to join raped a girl only three years older than me. Has it scarred me? No, not really, but I can understand why someone would ask the question. When I turned six I said good-bye to those people, basically, that life. My dad had gotten a job offer, but in order to get to get it, we had to move to Alabama. Of course we packed up and went. We needed the money. Alabama was better than Florida. We lived in a better neighborhood and the streets were clean. Meaning no drugs or street gangs. But, ever good side has a bad side to it. There was a railroad track going through the middle of the city, marking the left side and right. East Side. West Side. Don't so many cities have Sides? Ms. Smeeth says yes.

I grew up well in Alabama. When I was in school for the first time I got picked on for not understanding English well. I picked up words like freak, accent, wack, Hispanic, racism, hate, and disgust. I learned that making friends wasn't as easy I had thought it was, and that friends weren't what I thought they were. I thought the "gang" in Florida had been friends. Boy, was I wrong. I didn't make any friends my whole first year in Alabama, but I started getting used to the new place when I was around seven. I had learned about a pet store, and so one day I went to see it. I fell in love with all the little animals there. Cats, dogs, birds, mice, rats. Some small part of me was filled. I learned more about turtles and fish in my seventh year of life than I had learned about anything before. Not counting my sixth year. I hung around the pet store a lot and wished I was old enough to be ablt to volunteer. I saw many kids around 13 and older volunteering at the pet store. I didn't talk with any of them. I had learned that people older than me speak first. None of them ever spoke to me. Most of the kids there were white, and many snickered at me, speaking in racial terms I couldn't understand. I was, after all, only seven and still learning English.

One day while I was outside playing I saw a person sitting on the curb, smoking. I walked over and pointed to it. He laughed.

"What is it, little man? You want one too?"

I didn't understand, but pointed to the smoke again.

"It's a joint," the man said.

"Joint," I repeated.

"Hispanic little boy, huh?" he asked.

Hispanic? I nodded.

He laughed again. "Want one?"

I finally understood. "Sí," I said.

"English please," the man said nicely.

"Yes," I said.

"Good boy. Sit here by Tom."

I sat down and the man pulled out some smoke things from his pocket. "Going to roll you one, all right?"

I watched him. Fasinated. Roll? Okay. I got that. He handed the joint to me and I placed it in my mouth, copying Tom. He smiled.

"Now you have to light it," he said.

"Light it," I repeated and he did.

He breathed in. I breathed in. He smoothly exhaled, but I coughed.

Tom laughed again. He had a good laugh. I smiled.

"You'll get used to it," he told me.

From then on I hung out with Tom almost as much as I did at the pet store. He taught me how to roll my own joints, he said my hands were thieves' hands.

"Thief?" I said.

"Steals," Tom told me. He had thought me the word from the phrase "to take, no ask, no allowed."

With Tom, I learned quickly. And Tom learned a little from me too. I did math with him, drawing in the dirt of the playground.

"Or else they you can play piano real well," Tom said. "Come on, I'll show you."

Tom lead me to the local library and he looked up pianos and players. Soon he had taught me what a piano was, told me about a few keys, and explained why I was a pick-pocket.

He showed me how to steal. He showed me how to take the drug from the dealer as Tom talked to him. The dealers weren't in my side of town, they were on the otherside of the tracks.

In the East Side I met a new type of human. I met the African-American, and was scared. I hid behind Tom, clinging to him with my small thief's hands. But I was a little kid. It only took me a week or so before these new people were normal. Perfectly fine. I began splitting up my after-school time between Tom and the pet store. Tom wasn't allowed in the store.

The clerk himself taught me a few new words: bum, hobo, street picker, druggie.

Tom explained all the words to me.

When I turned 13 Tom brought me a new substance for my joint. It's what people legally smoke, tobacco. I didn't like it, so I gave it back to Tom as a present. We laughed about it. I had almost gotten the whole English language, but words cam and went nearly everyday. One day hot was the weather or your food, and then it was "he's so hot!" Then it would switch back again. How wouldn't get confused? My mom and dad made sure I remember my Spanish. All we talked in at home was Spanish. I even taught Tom a few words.

I always told Tom how I wanted a puppy. He told me that he would get me one. Once he got the money. I smiled when he said that. When I asked my parents, they only disagreed. Tom was almost like an older brother to me. When I had my 14th birthday, Tom disappeared. I searched for him after school, totally skipping over the pet store. None of the people that knew him in the East Side knew where he had gone.

My friend Tom, who I had now nearly grown up with, had left my life.