Thinking Back

by Hector Preciado

When I was young, one of my biggest experiences and changes in my life was moving from Mexico

after having lived there for a couple of years, to the United States. Due to this, I was forced into a

totally different kind of life style. When I came to the US especially it was like I entered a different

world . It took me a long time to get use to the environment, especially people around me. When I

first got to the US, all I did was stare at the people, noticing that the way they dressed was different.

I didn’t like being here at first because I was afraid that I was going to get lost, or have anybody to

play with.

I had lost a lot of things. One of the biggest things I had lost was freedom. It seemed that I had more

schedule when I got here. There was also more cars passing by my house so I didn’t have a lot of

room to move around and play. Back in Mexico I lived just a little outside the city called Distrito

Federal. The area I lived in seemed poor. The houses were closely packed together streets were dirty

and some walls were covered with graffiti. But my time that I spent there was one of the best. I was

I was always able to leave my house and meet up with some friends. Although my neighborhood

was a dangerous place I didn’t care because everybody seemed to know each other, the environment

had a friendly felling, and people would talk to you even if you didn’t know them.

Things me my friends and family would do to entertain yourself in Mexico was different, we would

play games maybe when we needed something we would rob it from stores, and just have fun doing

that. But at the same time more freedom sometimes brought more problems.

One day me and some other cousins were at a friends house. We were all just waiting on one of our

friends to come back from the store with the things some of us had told him to bring for us, but when

he got there we noticed he was something wrong. His face seemed red and all bunched up from

anger. We had asked him what had happened, he said.

“Some fucking kids from the other little neighborhood were starting problems, they tried to rob me

for my stuff ”

My older friend who we called ‘guero’ got mad at the fact that some kids had tried to do that to his

friend. There was always these kind of problems going on because kids would be walking in groups,

and since there would be no parents at the time they would do dumb things to mess around. My

friend decided that we should all just get together and find the other group of kinds and settle the

problem. Since I didn’t have anything to do, I just tagged along.

We went out to go find them, it didn’t take us long because we already knew ware they were from.

As soon as we spotted them, we went up to them. The oldest one said

“Why the hell you tried doing that shit to ma friend! Lets see how hard you guys think u are now

that there’s more of us”

We all stated fighting, it was about five against four, we had the extra person. At the end we won,

but some of us took some hits. We all got home to the same house exhausted, we all had some kind

of bruise and still felt some kind of anger.

“What happened now, u kids need to stop fooling around to much”.

That’s all the mom from our friend had said without getting mad. We started laughing, and didn’t

worry because we knew that all this was a usual thing. After that we would sometimes find the other

group of kids, but our problems had been settled so we would always go our own way and forget

about what happened.

School was one change that I liked when I came to the US. I remember in Mexico I would hate

going to school, in kinder garden. The was this one teacher who’s name I don’t recall, she would

make class so boring. She was probably in her 50's going on 60, she had a very serious stare, some

gray hair, the way the skin on her face was wrinkled also made it seem like she was mad all the

time. She would talk in a serious voice, one kid to my left said in a whisper

“Can this class get any worse”

But the teacher had herd him so she sent him outside of class for a wile. This teacher acted like she

was teaching adults, nobody was aloud to play, not for one bit. If a person was not dressed the well,

the teachers would be bothered. I guess at the same time im thankful for the custom over there

because it taught me to be a little more organized. School in the US focuses more on the education,

teachers are nicer. Schools here do more activities that help you learn.

As I started growing up, I noticed that school in the US wasn’t so different after all. Teachers

here would give u a hard time also, and sometimes it’s the least person you expected it to be. I

remember in 5^th grade, my art teacher gave me an attitude because I dropped one little box filled

with colored pencils, he said

“Do you think was a smart thing to do, thats why you cant be fooling around in class”

“It was an accident I didnt meant to” I replied .

“Well you need to be smart about what you are doing” , he said.

I felt suprise at the way he acted, because I thought an art teacher would be calm or something. But

at the same time I got mad and wanted to cuz him out, but all I said was

“You’re an asshole for acting like that”

then he sent me out of class, and I got in trouble.

All this got me to notice. Things in the US and Mexico is not so different after all. I started

missing Mexico less and less not just because I had spend so much time away from it but other

things. School, the way people joke around, and act with each other, had their own similarities

but at first it all seemed different when I got here.