Month: October 2017

I landed the role of the new kid in the neighborhood more than a few times. After the second or third time I learned to wait for the locals to teach me the rules and boundaries. It was considered bad etiquette to make yourself at home too quickly. Everyone had to give their approval before you were welcomed into the pack. I struggled during one of these transitions and I didn’t think I was going to get along with this new group of kids. My lucky break came one day when a kid in a wheelchair cruised into my front yard. We ran through the routine head nod, palm slap and handshake. This was a neighborhood custom to see if you were hip to the skip. Basically, were you cool enough to have been taught the handshake. I passed with flying colors and was now able to venture into the neighborhood and meet everyone.
Luckily this all happened during the summer so I skipped the new kid stage when I started the 3rd grade. Everything seemed to be going my way until a new family moved in next door to me later that year. These kids didn’t seem to know or care about the rules or boundaries. There were four brothers and three sisters which made them the biggest family on our block. I knew we were going to have problems but I ignored them. The rest of the kids tried to reach out to them but this family wanted nothing to do with us. Since I was their neighbor I was the closest and easiest target to hit. It started with small things like ice cream wrappers and soda cans being tossed into my yard. I would catch them laughing and making faces at me from their windows as I cleaned up their mess. They would knock on my door and run away whenever they saw the opportunity. I had to resort to extremes and challenge them to fights but they would never step out of their yard to accept. Parents got involved and within months a feud had formed but what they did next put them so far out of bounds that there was no coming back.
The 1984 Olympic games were being hosted in Los Angeles, Ca and that put my little town in the path of the Olympic torch. Not only was the torch coming to town but it was actually going to be passing directly through my neighborhood. We all rode our bikes to the intersection and waited for the camera crews. Our goal was to be on the news that day. The police and fire stations had all their vehicles out along the route. My neighbors were not allowed to go so they had to watch from their front yard. My mom was just getting home when she saw all of this going on up the street. She asked the neighbors what was happening and they told her that I had been hit by a car. She bolted down the street screaming and crying. Another neighbor stopped her to see what was wrong. My mom pointed at the intersection and said that I had been hit by a car. The neighbor then pointed me out in the crowd and showed my mom that I was alright. One of my friends noticed this and told me that my mom was looking for me. I rode over and noticed a small group of people trying to comfort her. When I got to her she looked like she wanted to hug and strangle me at the same time. She was starting to hyperventilate so I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. When we got back to our house she told me what the boys next door had told her. I ran out of my house but they were already inside and laughing at me through their windows. I pelted their house with everything I could pick up and throw. My friends ran over to see what was going on. I told them what they had done and they immediately let me know that they were with me one hundred percent. This was the point of no return for me. On the 20th day of July, 1984, I declared war.
They didn’t come out of their house for days and I didn’t move from my front yard for the same amount of time. I knew that eventually one of those boys was going to have to go to the store to get something their mom needed. That or their dad would order someone to come out and fight. They eventually came out, but they always had a younger sibling with them and a sister or two. There was an age old rule on the streets. You had to give someone a pass when they were with family. So I had to change strategies. I had an entire summer to catch these guys so I took my time. The first thing we did was set up camp right in front of their house. This became our new meeting point. We parked our bikes there and played marbles under a big tree next to the sidewalk. This went on for months. The oldest brother would come out to try and make peace with us. It would work out for a while and then something would happen to take us back to square one. The hardest part was that people would look to me to sound the battle cry. I was getting a little tired of it and I was ready to let it all go, but things are never that easy.
We would declare a truce and try to get along but someone would always mess things up. It was usually one of their friends or relatives that would come over to visit. They were probably curious to see who this big bad bully was. Then I would come out and they would laugh. I was 9 going on 10 but the chip on my shoulder was easily 35 years old. Words would turn into threats and then threats turned into headlocks that required adults to undo. We were kids so our fights were never that brutal. On occasion fists would fly but the battles usually turned into wrestling matches. What they didn’t know was that a few guys on our block were high school and college level freestyle wrestlers who taught us an assortment of submission holds. So on more than one occasion their dad had to run out to separate a well placed full nelson. Trust me, when I lock that in its a done deal. Their parents managed to use someone elses address and they ended up going to different schools. By this time the four brothers stayed inside or in their back yard. We were done with them and moved on to other things.
We eventually crossed paths again in our high school years and now the younger brothers started to associate themselves with a group of people that were trying to make a name for themselves in the street gang culture. This is when things got a little touchy. Some of the friends I had grown up with were also in the early stages of gang life and we all knew that this was not something to be played with. People looked to me to see if I was ready to join this battle, but that was out of bounds for me. I could not go that route for many reasons. Luckily my friends also realized this and let me do my own thing. By our sophomore year the majority of my friends had been kicked out of school which made me a little vulnerable on my walks to and from classes. I had some close calls with these individuals which led to situations that led to more run ins and close calls. These were not good times for me and they were about to take a turn for the worse.
My closest friend from my neighborhood was always that kid that rolled his wheelchair into my front yard to introduce himself to me. He was born paralyzed and was in a wheelchair all of his life. It never stopped him from doing anything we would do. Sports, break dancing, fighting and whatever else we dreamed up. He was always there showing us how it was done. He raced his wheelchair in competitions and had the biggest biceps out of all of us. His brothers were the wrestlers that taught all of us how to defend ourselves. He was the spirit of our neighborhood and one day he informed us that he had to have some surgery to correct something in his back. He had gone through this before so we didn’t think much of it. We slapped hands and told him to hurry up and get back to the block as soon as possible. Something went wrong after the surgery and he passed away due to complications. Our church could not hold the number of people that showed up for his funeral. All day long people put their arms around me and uttered the phrase “sorry for your loss” I must have heard it a hundred times. I was looking for an empty place to sit alone but it was impossible. I walked around the outside of the church and that’s where I bumped into my neighbors. We nodded and shook hands but didn’t speak a word. Even though we considered each other enemies we were still from the same block. We grew up together even though we spent most of that time growing apart. I let go of all the grudges I had going on at that time and all of those grudges let go of me. They saw that I was hurting but showed me some respect by leaving me alone. You can’t kick someone when they are down, its against the rules and puts you out of bounds.

I can still hear the dog whimpering as my uncle opened his car door and told it to go away. We were visiting relatives and a stray had made itself comfortable on my great grandmother’s front porch. Had I known that was the mission we were on I would have passed. I looked back and could see the dog barking and running after us. I had never seen that dog before but I was choking up thinking about how scared it must have felt. My uncle mumbled something and the other passengers laughed. We spent the day running errands and visiting relatives and when we returned to my great grandmother’s the stray was running around the yard acting as if it was supposed to be there. I laughed and raised my little arms in victory. After hearing how the dog had made it back in one piece a kind neighbor asked if he could have it. I should probably mention that my great grandmother lived in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico and that I was around 7 years old. I wanted that dog to tell me everything it had been through.

I always noticed the packs of stray dogs wandering those streets at night. I also began to notice stray cars sitting on bricks and stray furniture on the side of the road. Sometimes I would spot a stray person in one of those cars or on some of that furniture surrounded by stray dogs. I would wonder if they were all told to get out of a car at some point in their lives.

These memories often showed up in my earliest attempts at writing. Some of the strays would show up in the middle of a story and then disappear because that is what strays do. I had a nice collection of notebooks and maybe even a floppy disc or two with the beginnings, middles and endings to more than a few stories. I only finished what was required for school and then one day I opened the car door and told them to get out. I convinced myself writing was not for me and I got rid of everything. Stray stories began to show up on my doorsteps. You really can’t get rid of them. I pulled out notebooks that people had given me as gifts hoping that one day I would hand it back full of stories.  Those notebooks found homes on nightstands, desks and even one under my couch that my kids use to leave me notes and drawings. I hoped that my strays would see the blank pages as a place to come home to. Now I spend the rare quiet moments at home tracking down my stray thoughts and stories. The streets of my imagination are full of handmade LOST STORY signs. Hopefully they all come home like that wonder mutt in Tijuana did years ago.