When I was 11 years old, I started to stray away from my family's values. This prompted a whole new set of problems at school. "He is unsupportable," read part of one of the nicer letters that came home from school.
My mother had bitterly warned me, that if I didn't "shape up" she was going to call my father. They had been separated since I was about three years old and since then he had always lived in a different part of the world. She was going to tell him to put me "away" in some kind of boarding school, Preferably a military one.
Needless to say, the more she threatened, the more I rebelled. I kept living as if there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. Well, one day it finally happened, I "broke the camels back". After many warnings she "busted me". I was ditching. By the time she caught me I was skipping school regularly, about two to three times a week. The problem with this time, problem for me anyways, was that I was on my way to East L.A. You see my mother as a single parent worked very hard to keep us in Pasadena, a good neighborhood, but.
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Valladares 2.
no, I had to find my way back into the Barrio that she worked so hard to keep us out of. So, there I was waiting for the RTD bus all dressed up. I was wearing a pair of very baggy "Khakis", a very loose and very long flannel shirt, buttoned all the way up to my neck and a black hair net. I thought I was a hard ass looking Essay actually I was just a wannabee, what gang members call a pledge. Either way I was "Hard", until my mom pulled up around the corner in her dark blue Ford LTD. Maan I ran like it was the JURA and I had just ripped off some hubcaps! It was too late, even with my uniform on she recognized me, and she ran me down like I was an escapee from Juvy. Man, I was done. She stuck to her "guns" all right! She called my father, wherever he was, told him what she had been going through with me and what I was wearing the day she caught me.
