A Little Bit About Me
I was born on December 12 in --------, which was also by chance in the same hospital, on the same day as one of the many friends I’ve lost contact with after leaving preschool, and I grew in up in ------. The one thing that I believe that has shaped my life is my childhood, and that if I had lived a privileged one, I am almost certain, I would be a very different, and unloving person. My biological parents names are ------- and ------, though I know my mother and live with her, meeting my father is a task I’ll never achieve in my lifetime. Mr. -------------- left before I had the ability to remember anything. Living in what would be considered the ghetto before the first grade, I started to understand what a hard life was at a young age.
On a typical weekend during my preschool years I would wake up and after getting ready, my mother would drive me to the preschool that I had been going to since I was around six months old. Before we left for the pre-school we would, every so often, wake up to an apartment that was flooded up to my knees, but that all depended if it rained that night or not. At that preschool I would eat breakfast and lunch. I had also seen friends that I had lost contact with, don’t talk to anymore, or have lost the ability to see one another very often. The first friend I had ever gained was about a little less than a month younger than me, whose name is Co----. Co----- has blonde hair and is now tall, but was shorter than me when we were around 5 years old. He is the one friend I haven't lost contact with, yet is still a person I am able to see every so often. I had also became friends with a girl named C--K---, who is also blonde. She is the person with the same birthday as mine own, as mentioned before. Some other people that I used to interact with were, N---, M----, a girl named D---, and my uncles younger cousin A----.
I would spend time with all of these people, having no idea what kind of life I was living compared to them. All day, almost five days a week I would spend time with them, these people were almost like a second family. While I was at the preschool I had as much fun as a child would have at a preschool that made you learn math every once and awhile. Overall my day as a preschooler was a very simple one, after preschool I would go home and my mother would usually make Bisquick Shake n’Pour pancakes in our kitchen that was about as large as four of Mrs.S----'s desks.
According to my mother, every weekend we would stay at my grandmother's house because the area in which we lived in became very violent during the weekends. Though I only remember bits and pieces of one of the events, my mother did tell me the rest of the story in which the area we lived in became violent. The most I remember of the event was that we came back home from my staying at my grandmothers and there were tire tracks in the dirt in front of our apartment building and a police officer was right next to those tracks. I later found out that there had been a gang “war”, you could say, right in front of our building. Another incident of living in a violent neighborhood was that our house was broken into by teenagers that were about thirteen or fourteen years old, though my mother also had to tell me that story, I ended up putting the pieces together and I realized I had a memory of their mother begging mine not to sue her children.
After we were done with our food, my greatest guess is that we went to my grandmother’s house. To me, my grandmother’s house was the most amazing place in all of the world, even though everyone fought constantly. For me, it wasn't just a place where family members came together to fight and argue, it was a place where I got to see people I loved and cared about, it was a place I could see a person still to this day I love to see. It was the one place I could see my aunt C----, she grew up with me because she was only a few years older than me. To this day we have arguments about our age difference every time we are together. C----- believes we have a two and a half year difference, while I would bet my life on it being a three and a half year difference.
She is technically my half aunt, since she received a gene pool that I did not receive. C------ is Mexican with long dark brown hair and didn't wear glasses at the time.
Yet other than family there were other things at that house that would make it feel like a heaven. My great-great grandmother was born in 1912 and died when I was in the sixth grade. She had come to America from Croatia when she was around twenty years old and somehow bought nine acres of land, with a beautiful house. After my great grandmother was born and grew up, my great-great grandmother gave her half of an acre, in which she created a house and pool. That house was the place practically grew up at, giving my childhood many amazing memories.
The nine acres were the one place, other than sleep, that I could escape from family and/or friends fighting with one another, so with my aunt, we listened to nature instead of yelling. If you were to go to there on one of the nicest days during the summer, right when you start walking you would find the most beautiful meadow. In the grass there were these little pink flowers that I remember adoring and wishing I could just stay with forever, but C----- always made us rush because that was the one place where there were load of bees and my grandmother, her mother, is extremely allergic to bees, so I’m guessing that always made her extra cautious.
Right at the end of that land was a road that always made me feel a bit sad because I knew that meant we would had to leave soon. At the road, Casandra and I would jump over the mini ditch and we would play a game, which consisted of taking turns sticking our foot on the side of the road and just barely touching the edge. As I think about it more, I’ve never seen a car drive down that road before, so I suppose we could’ve danced in the road if we wanted to try it out.
In between the road and the meadow was the place I felt most comfortable in and it was not just because we played a series of different games. I felt comfortable there because we were neither at the end near the road or at the beginning in the meadow, we were right in the middle, not leaving but also not staying.