Perhaps Antonio isn’t the little muffin of loving kindness I thought him to be. Turns out that he is one of those hardcore guys whom, as the kiddies in the sandlot like to say, “Will kill you at the drop of a hat.” Funny, I mean one of his best friends even said to me, “If you thinks he’s that nice, then you don’t know him well enough.”
Hmmm, and I couldn’t wait to get to know him better...
(I’ve never heard anyone say, “I’m a pretty bad judge of character.” Well, I am not one of those people. I’ll say it unequivocally. “When it comes to men, women, and sometimes even dogs, my instinctual judge of character pretty much sucks.”)
“13 is back” tags appeared all over my classroom today and I became a bit confused. Had MS13 gone anywhere? The biggest, most violent prison gang on two continents. Were they on hiatus? Writers’ strike got them down? It wasn’t until the end of the day that Erick told me it was a reference to Antonio and Roberto.
Yeah, man, you can take one or two of our fourteen-year-old leaders, but you can’t keep us down forever. So, after an afternoon? of defeat, MS13 decided to announce it was back.
It was on Antonio’ orders, too.
Arturo, who I caught tagging the desk - I always thought he was more of a leader than that - was shocked when I turned him in. He swore up and down that he’d only ever tagged in pencil. Uh, isn’t the whole point of tagging to leave your mark? To say ‘I own this property, area, etc.’ Pencil... really? What are you saying there? I’m just leasing for the time being.
He swore that I was wrong and he was being suspended for a week and put on after-school detention, cleaning up tagging, for the remainder of the year. Yet, he wasn’t mad with me at all. Might be because he was high as a kite.
Arturo is an interesting dude. Every time I see him for fifth period he says, “nah, man. My eyes are always like this.” and every time I tell him, “they weren’t like this when I had you third period, not even an hour or so ago.” And every time he says, “oh yeah, right, yeah.” “Promise you won’t tell…” And I do, because if you think suspending or kicking a kid out of middle school for smoking pot is the answer, you’re a fool. The kid’s been getting high every damn day since he was eight, by the way.
Arturo’s a cool dude. He looks like he’s about to throw down any second, but he’s actually pretty chill.
He wants out but doesn’t think he can ever get there. He’s pretty much just waiting to get stomped by Antonio, Roberto, and one or two other of the local 13’s. He’s already Long Beach, but since he’s moved it’s necessary to be initiated once again. Like, duh!
I asked Arturo about stealing cars. He couldn’t believe Antonio had told me about it. He said it’s pretty damn easy, though.
Gosh, I’m thinking I really need to reconsider what I do for a living. I mean, if car jacking had good medical and dental attached, who knows?
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