Neighborhood Essays

Fernando Hart
Collage comp. 10/6/11

Lefferts

Back when I was young the memories I had living on Lefferts were probably one of the best as soon As I got up the t.v would always be on from the night before and my favorite cartoons use to show like Hey Arnold, the bugs bunny show, pinky and the brain and even Rocko’s modern life. Back then was considered the best cartoons on earth as I would always say it. After I would finish watching my cartoons I would always run down the stairs to eat breakfast and it was all types of my favorites. And my mom knew exactly how to make my food with a special surprise for me after each meal. I also liked how she would read books to me in the day and night time amd then tell me what lesson I learn from the book and would always have to recite to her and write at least one paragraph about it. Even taking my platic lunch box to school that had a picture of a dinosaur on it that my mom packed lunch with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and I attended a middle school on lefferts called St.Francis of Assisi and going there really put me on a track for my high school years.
In my middle school I use to do all type of craziness like run down the halls and even tape my hands to paper and always seemed to be so active until it was recess time when I could really move around. But I got older I started to see that high school was on the way and I needed to settle down. With the school i obtain new friends that lived on the block and we always use to have the time of our lives it was either we rode our bikes up and down the block or when it gets real dark outside we would go out and play hide and seek and of course no one seem to be able to find me because I use to run to the corner store and hide with an old friend that my family knew for years and he would always say hi to me and tell me to stay safe and he would always help me hide.
It always use to be me, Rhodd, Roach, Jason, Chris ,and Sunny it almost seem to be the best times of my life when I was that age but like anything I grew up and thing started to change a lot of businesses started moving out and more crimes and drugs started to hit the streets and less of my friends started to come outside and I would lose contact with some of them on and off.
My neighborhood isn’t a rough neighborhood with guys selling cracks and prostitutes on the corner but we do have guys selling weed on the corner people getting robbed and girls who do have sex for money but there are more discreet about it and don’t making things hot. As any neighborhood, there some positive and negative memories.
Some negative memories are when I got arrested for weed possession right on Nostrand and church and I had to go to court in a month or two. After the arrest I was angry at myself for putting myself in such a predicament that I could not handle. I then had to go to court but it turned out that I didn’t have a criminal background so the judge dismissed the case but he said I had a year on probation for a year which means I had to stay out of trouble for a year. Another memory is when I almost got shot on Lefferts coming home from a party that my friend hosted and my friend who was a big homie for the gang we all know as the Crips had to help me run because the people shooting thought I was someone else but he stood up for me and told them that “I was good over on these sides” which basically mean that where I lived that I should not be getting pressed at or should not be feeling any type of fear.
Some positive things about my hood was that the friends I had and how we grew up together and learned from each other mistakes and even how I worked at a hardware store and met new faces on the block and learned a few things or two about tools and hard ware.

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