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I JUST WANNA BE AVERAGE
- “The neighborhood was poor, and it was in transition. Some old white folks had lived there for decades and were retired. Younger black families were moving up from Watts and settling by working white class families newly arrived from the South and Midwest.”
- “Right to the north of us was a record shop, a barber shop presided over by old Mr. Graff, Walts Malts, a old shoe repair shop with a big Cat’s Paw decal on the window, a third barber shop, and a brake shop” (all this reminds me of my area everything is so close knit)
- “One night I watched as a guy sprinted from Walt’s to toss something on our lawn. The police were right behind, and a cop tackled him, smashing his face into the sidewalk; I ducked out to find the packet; a dozen glassine bags of heroin. Another night, one August midnight an argument outside the record store ended with a guy being shot to death”
QUESTIONS:
- Mike Rose had an experience, not just a normal moving transition experience, like trying to make new friends, going to a different school, or learning the ins and outs of the neighborhood. Mike Rose was put into a place with high crime rates, shootings, police brutality, etc. Some of these things people should never see in their lives, but as a 7-8 year old Mike witnessed these things. “One night I watched as a guy sprinted from Walt’s to toss something on our lawn. The police were right behind, and a cop tackled him, smashing his face into the sidewalk; I ducked out to find the packet; a dozen glassine bags of heroin. Another night, one August midnight an argument outside the record store ended with a guy being shot to death”. These two scenarios depict the life that he had to accustom himself to. Rose’s parents are similar to Coate’s parents in a couple of ways, in a broad view both of these parents had to go through struggles and changes in their lives. Both had to try and make their child’s lives easier than harder, and both of these parents had issues with health, demographic problems, and problems with everyday people.
