|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jonathan Price | ||||||||||
| March 16, 2004 | ||||||||||
| Defining Moment Essay | ||||||||||
| The Ride | ||||||||||
| ����������� When I was nine years old, my mom and dad both worked. My mom would drop off my brother and me at my aunt's house so she could watch us. At that time, my cousin Tony, lived there. Since he was older than my brother and me, we followed him wherever he went, and he did not mind us going with him. He had an old Grand Marquis and it was painted yellow. I liked sitting in the back of his car because he had house speakers up under the back seat and the vibration felt funny. I looked up to him because he always gave me his cassette tapes that he did not play anymore. | ||||||||||
| ����������� The first tape he gave me was a single by Biz Markie. I can not remember the name of the song, but I know I played it a lot and loud and it annoyed my mom. As my brother and I got older, my parents knew that we could take care of ourselves when they went to work. We stopped going there on a regular basis. | ||||||||||
| ����������� One day, when I was fifteen years old my family decided to visit my Aunt Ruth?s house. My aunt's house is one-story with aluminum siding, a big window on the right, and two small windows on the left in the front of the house. The backyard looked like a construction yard full of concrete blocks and bags of cement. My uncle made houses for a living, so in his free time, he was building a two-story garage in the back of the house. The only time I got to see what was inside of the garage was when my dad asked my uncle about it. | ||||||||||
| ����������� That day when we went to visit my aunt, I knew we would be bored because our cousin had moved out. I brought my football so that my brother and I could play catch. My brother went inside of the house to get something. I was tossing the ball up, and down and I noticed a car parking in front of the house. It caught my attention because it drove past the first time, then it turned around. | ||||||||||
| ����������� The car was a dark blue, box top Chevrolet Caprice. The windows were black tinted to about twenty percent because we could not see inside of the car. The car also had 15-inch Dayton's on it. The window rolled down, and it was Tony smiling at us. | ||||||||||
| ����������� I ran over to him to see what he was doing. He said he was driving to his friend's house and told us to get in the back seat. I told him I needed to tell my parents that I was going, and he nodded at me. I ran to the front door and yelled into the screen, "I'm riding with Tony." I did not stay to hear an answer. Tony was in his twenties and had moved out. I asked him, "Where are we going?" And he said, "I need to make a few stops." Looking over the inside, I noticed that the car had a dark blue interior and a nice sound system. | ||||||||||
| ����������� On the first stop he made, Tony reached into the glove box for a plastic bag and took it inside a house. It had taken him about five minutes before leaving the house. Then he drove to another stop at a house, and it took him about the same time. The last stop he made was in an apartment complex. I was curious about what was in the glove box, and as soon as he disappeared from the car, I went to the front seat to look inside. I noticed two things that surprised me. | ||||||||||
| ����������� The first thing that I noticed was a wad of money with a rubber band wrapped around it. The second thing was a gun; I picked it up and looked at it. It was a black .38 revolver with a wood handle. I put it back in the glove box the way it was and went back to the back seat. When he came back, I asked him what he did for a living, and he told me that he did a lot of things. He pulled out a bag of an unknown substance and told me, "I sell this." | ||||||||||
| ����������� When I realized that my cousin Tony was a hustler, he showed me how he made a living out of selling drugs. This was defining moment for me, because I never knew about that kind of lifestyle except on TV. I did certain things for him, and he paid me for it. He changed the way I thought about reality in the world.�������� | ||||||||||
| � � | ||||||||||