Mentor Lita

Luisiana Rosales

English 1A

Mentor Lita

    Who is my mentor? When I first thought of this question I really couldn’t think of anyone specifically. Naturally I started to name off different people who have mentored other individuals in the past like, Socrates to Plate, Aristotle to Alexander the Great, Watson to Mary Jones Cover, etc. Each of these past mentors have made a great impact to their mentees by taking them under their wing and showing them the ropes of how to do something, by using their own knowledge as a guide to go off from. Eventually only one person came to my mind, who fit the criteria, my grandmother; Rosario, Or how I’ve come to call her over the years, Lita.
    Over the years Lita has served as a role model to all of her grandchildren altogether. As children she taught us the importance of education and hard work. She openly admits on more than one occasion that she regrets never taking her education more seriously because she has had to settle for temporary jobs such cleaning up after others. However with all the hardships she has had to deal with she doesn't allow it to bring her down. In addition, rather than shamefully hide her past mistakes, she instead teaches us from them.
    For example, she became a teenage mother at the tender age of 15. Fortunately, the father decided to marry her but proved unfaithful many times during their marriage. However Lita never allowed those grim events to change her outlook on life. She remained faithful to God and taught all of her grandchildren to always keep the faith even when hope no longer seems existent to us. Although attempting to hold onto this mentality seemed difficult, it still proved to help me through the most excruciating times.
    Furthermore, to this day Lita still remains to be an example to all of her grandchildren. With all of her life lessons and constant support, my amount of respect and gratitude to her almost seem frugal compared to all her years of timeless tutelage that in return I feel that I should follow her words of wisdom in gratitude for all the years she has aided me and hope to become as great as a person as she is.

Breaking Boundaries

Luisiana Rosales

English 1A

Frankie Lennon

Breaking Boundaries

    “Respect your elders! Respect your elders! Respect your elders!” As a child I was told this one too many times by one person who adored flaunting the fact he exited the womb earlier than I did.  Due to this constant reminder I was forced to always agree or do whatever my older brother Luis said. Whenever I would tell my parents about his insipid ways they would be blinded by his sudden look of innocence. In addition, whenever we were left alone at home, he was unfortunately in charge, which made me always resent him because he would view this responsibility as a power over me. As a result, we never saw eye to eye on anything, creating countless arguments over frivolous things.

Luckily, as Luis progressed into a pre-teen his foul behavior became visible to my parents. Although they reprimanded him for his rude behavior toward me; he would only momentarily cease his tyranny, remembering later to pick up where he left off. This laborious routine annoyed me at first, but as we continued to grow up this became normal to me and overtime I learned to fight back. With time the routine began to be tweaked. It usually started off with a calm conversation proceeded by a disagreement.  This was then followed by a bitter silence plagued of annoyance. Ending with us, forgetting the whole thing ever happened. With time we picked up where we left off. Gradually this lack of resolution became the resolution until one day it became too much for me to bare.

    It was the summer of 2005, and it was another blistering hot day. It was one of those days where no one wanted to go outside to face the dry air; air that by simply inhaling it just once caused one’s throat to become instantaneously dry, making one direly crave anything to drink. Thankfully my parents had invested in an air conditioning system years before, otherwise we would all be sitting in our sweat fanning ourselves excessively as sweat beads would run down our backs like insects crawling rapidly away from a light. On this afternoon my brother, grandmother, and I were all pleasantly sitting in our living room calmly watching TV on three separate couches that faced the television set perfectly. As he usually did, Luis sat across from my couch with his laptop resting on his lap, chatting with who knows who and doing who knows what. I, on the other hand, had the remote control and was looking for something “tolerable” to watch, because by this late in the summer one had already seen everything on TV, ensuing a tediously long search for new entertainment. My grandmother on the other hand kept going in and out of the kitchen as she prepared a cholesterol healthy lunch for my brother. Overall it was just another day, or so I thought.

    As I finally decided on a television show, of which I cannot recall the name of, Luis looked up and found the need to roll his eyes and mumble something. I decided to ignore his obvious bait to criticize me for something else. As I turned my attention to what I had chosen, Luis decided to blast a song that he knew all too well I disliked, because the lyrics and the song itself seemed idiotic to me. However Luis took it upon himself to poison the air with this obtrusive noise, and instead of yelling at him to turn it down I decided to ridicule him by asking him in a disgusted tone, “Why are you listening to that?” He immediately grew furious and shot back, asking why was I even watching TV if I had seen everything on TV. He then added that I should get a life already because my TV watching was getting annoying. I should have done the Christian thing and turned the other cheek, but instead I retorted with, “Look who’s talking; all you ever do is spend time on that computer listening to God-awful music.” He glared at me and subtly responded with, “rude.” I found this extremely hypocritical because he had decided to be inconsiderate of everyone by blasting music that only he enjoyed. Naturally I told him this which resulted in what seemed to be the next David & Goliath feud.
    As usual, Luis started spouting his elitist rhetoric that he was three years older than me and that he knew much more than I did, hence he was always in charge. To this I swiftly corrected him by saying that he was two and a half years older than me and that our grandmother was the one in charge, not him, so he should stop kidding himself with those delusions of grandeur. He looked at me bitterly saying that if this was the way I acted with my teachers that he felt sorry for them because I obviously did not know how to respect my elders. Without a second thought I responded that unlike him I respected them because they earned my respect whereas he was someone whom I would never respect. This rebuttal apparently sparked the fire to his dormant anger because he got up without missing a beat, and I got up ready to stand my ground. However in the time it took me to stand up, Luis had already pounced on me pushing me to the wall. I was distraught and was ready to kick him but instead he pushed me again, yelling out “dog.” Tears began to cloud my vision and I tried desperately to hold them back but I felt powerless. All those years as a kid I had believed myself to be so full of hidden strength, enough so that I could take on the world, the idea now seemed to diminish in the face of danger. I was no longer a lion ready to fight but a zebra ready to run for its’ life, and upon registering my situation I ran from my brother into the kitchen where my grandmother stood advising my brother in Spanish to calm himself and to think of his cholesterol. He shrugged off her concerns and spat out “dog” to me once more. This time my grandmother was here to witness Luis’ rage, and although she only understood simple English words, she understood fully what Luis was calling me and quickly penalized him for calling me as such.

During this moment of deliberation I quickly ran out of the kitchen through the hallway, and into my room, making sure to firmly close the door behind me; locking and barricading it with anything I could find in my room. As I scanned my towering handiwork looking for any flaws that could allow Luis any easy entry, I heard heavy footsteps reverberate in the hallway quickly followed by a slammed door adjacent to my room. Presumably Luis had been admonished for his behavior and later when my mother came home I would have to explain what had been said. However, hours later when my mother came home, my grandmother nor my brother made any reference to what had happened earlier. It was days later when my brother finally did speak to me and when he did, it was as if he was talking to someone he had never met before. Eventually his hostility melted away and he started to pick up on his usual habits forgetting that the whole thing ever happened, leaving yet another fight unresolved.

To this day, I continue to fight with my brother, and like all our other fights they remain unresolved. One key difference between our past fights and now is their frequency. When we were growing up, we lived together under the same household making the likelihood for an argument to start easily. When Luis moved out to attend college in Berkeley, somehow things just seemed to settle down between us. We didn’t find the need to disagree anymore. Eventually I realized that I needed to put aside my differences and notice that I wouldn’t be able to spend time at all with my brother like I used to. Simultaneously Luis came to this realization and we progressively began to disagree less when he visited. Realistically we do argue every now and then but the tendency has dramatically dropped. I believe it was because we both came to this understanding that we came to  appreciate each other more. Overall what really matters in life is having each other through the good and the bad times because in the end age is nothing but a number.

Commonewealth Effect

Luisiana Rosales

English

Frankie Lennon

Commonwealth Effect

    “The End,” “Dead End,” “Fín,” usually when you read or hear anything that finishes off it means there’s nothing else to see or do. However, I grew up on a dead end street and to me; it was never a dead end, but just another adventure waiting to begin. During the 1990s, as a child I wasn’t aware of any racism growing up. Instead the only thing I was focused on and deeply affected by was school and whether or not I was passing the first grade. Another thing I vividly remember about the 90’s was the amount of fun I had playing pretend with my next door neighbors. I met these neighbors a few weeks after I moved into the duplex on 446 N. Commonwealth Avenue, Los Angeles, California and had just started the first grade. Before the duplex I had just lived in another duplex in LA, but this Commonwealth duplex felt much different than all the others.
           For example, the Commonwealth duplex was no ordinary duplex. For one, it was built somewhat like a fun house. I say that because there were four families living in total in this duplex. If anything, it was much smaller than the structure of an apartment building, but the living space was much bigger than an apartment would be. There was a downhill driveway that led to a hidden parking lot behind the duplex. The neighborhood around the duplex was very much diverse. To the left of the building stood a rehab center for mature adults, to the right of us lay anther duplex that didn’t seem to have too much commotion happening in it. Across the street lay a dark abyss of hollow looking trees that you would believe to be haunted by the dark, by the ominous color it emitted, under all those trees lied a very much hidden house. As children, my brother Luis, my two neighbors, Judy and Abby would each make up stories about that house, we each dared each other to cross the street and touch the gate of this mystery house; however none of us had the guts or permission to cross the street and knock this dark colored gate. Further down the road stood a large faded pink bricked wall that said “dead end, not a through street.” Whatever lay beyond that wall always filled us with wonder and curiosity.
           Some of the people that I grew up with included my older brother Luis who always seemed to have an answer for every question anyone asked him. My neighbors Abby, who was the same age as me yet, had a terrible temper and a knack for lying, and Judy who was a year younger than my brother and seemed to have the caring and compassion of a mother. If someone were to look at us they’d never believe we’d all be able to get along or be able to stand one another. Nevertheless we were the best of friends, and every day I would be anxious for school to end, not for the obvious reasons, but for the pure joy I got from playing “pretend” with my neighbors and brother. Each day we came up with a different adventure such as pretending to be kings and queens of different countries who were also gifted with a vast amount of power. The next day we would probably decide to race our bikes down the hill that laid adjacent to our duplex and see who could brake the fastest. Fortunately we were all well taught so no one got hurt. Either way, everyday seemed like a new adventure just waiting to happen.
          When I contemplated all of those past events I noticed ethnicity and beliefs never really played a part in my friends. For one, my friends back on Commonwealth, Judy and Abby were raised Jewish whereas my brother and I were raised Catholic, however we never disputed or ridiculed one another based on our beliefs. Quite the contrary, instead we taught each other different traditions and practiced different things. As a seven year old I didn’t fully appreciate that experience but when I think back to it, I was lucky, lucky to have shared my beliefs with someone and learn about theirs in the process. Sadly this type of acceptance is no longer present around me because everyone is either afraid to state what they believe in or it’s a subject filled with argument. In result I grew up with a deep and profound understanding, because I was never afflicted by racism or any type of discrimination. As a result, as an older individual one of my many characteristics is acceptance. I accept everyone around me and I thrive to know more about them because we are all different and we each carry a new and unique way of thinking that has yet to be discovered because of all the existing prejudices.
           As I continue to grow I gladly take with me every day the adventures and lessons I learned on Commonwealth and instill it into whatever I partake in, because Commonwealth will not only be my past dwelling but will forever more be a part of me as I continue to explore new revenues. I’ll always remember the time I spent on Commonwealth not as a “dead end,” but as a new exciting adventure waiting to be fully reveled in.