Pride
I was born into one of the poorest-worst neighborhoods in all of Southern California, the Hazard Projects in the heart of East Los Angeles. I never even knew I was poor until long after I had left my junkie and gang infested community. To me, that was home sweet home and as far as I knew, everybody who didn’t live in my neighborhood was rich. From Mr. Lee’s liquor store that had a larger selection of liquor than produce and always smelled like urine to the noise from the block parties every Friday and Saturday that usually ended in police being called, I loved my environment. I used to love playing outside in the dirt with my brother and my friends from my building. Marbles, that was our favorite game. We played day and night. We used to pretend like we were playing for millions of dollars and at the end of the day whoever had the most marbles would tell the rest of us what he would do with all his money. We spoke of cars we dreamt of because, of course, there were no nice cars in our neighborhood. Most of all, we spoke of leaving the ghetto and going to a nice neighborhood. My family eventually moved out of the Hazard Projects but I felt like I never really had a chance to leave properly. With my many fond memories, I could never understand why my mother and father never wanted to talk about my old neighborhood in a good manner. I couldn’t understand why we took off without looking back like a bandits. I was never allowed to visit my friends and this upset me very much.