Family

     I love my family, and I also miss them very much. You see I joined the military about five years ago, and left my family back in Georgia. I try to go visit them as much as I can, but it's hard to do because it's so expensive to fly across the country. I come from a family of four including me, my brother, my mom, and my dad. My brother's name is Joey, and he is six years older than me. Him and I have always had a pretty close relationship at least when we were younger. He is currently in the Air Force,and is stationed in North Carolina. My mom moved to Florida when i was about 19 to take care of her dad. He was really sick and didn't make too much longer after that. My dad is still in Georgia, and has a new wife. They had my new little sister about five years ago. I haven't really got to see her very much, but i am going home for Christmas to spend time with her. So i guess it's safe to say that we are pretty spread out now, but we still try to keep in touch over the phone.

      Now i am living with my girlfriend in camarillo, and most of her family lives here. I have pretty much become a part of her family. I guess that family doesn't really mean blood relatives, but more on the lines of who you care about and who cares about you. I love her family, and consider myself a part of it. So yea family dosen't have to be blood, but just people who love and care about you.

interview with a classmate.

     I interviewed a guy by the name of Matthew King. He was born and raised here in sunny California. He has had a pretty normal life with nothing really out of the ordinary. As for now he is looking for work,and comes to school about two hours a day. One of the things he likes about Oxnard College is that it is pretty close to his house,and he doesn't have to waste much gas. The main thing that motivates him to go to college is the fact that not many people in his family have gone to college, and he wants to be one of the first to do so. His "motto" for school would be to "just get threw it". In ten years he wants to have a place of his own, a good job, and he also wants all his goals to be accomplished. His culture has always put college as the first step to getting your life organized, and together. I guess you could say that he is taking that first step.

just a normal day

            It was a normal day in Griffin Georgia (A suburb south of Atlanta Georgia). I lived on Bicycle Rd. My brother Joey, who was twelve years old at the time, was next door at his friend Robbie’s house. Robby was around the same age as my brother and they were pretty close friends. Robby also had a sister that was my age. We were pretty close friends too, but I don’t remember where she was on this day. I was only six years old and so I couldn’t really hang out with them. I got bored, so I decided to go over to my friend KC’s house. My friend KC was only five, and lived across the street from Robby. He had a long drive way with a trailer sitting off to the left, were his grandma lived. His house was at the end of the drive way. His grandmother owned a dog named bear. It was a chow, which are big fluffy dogs, about the size of a pit bull. The dog got his name for a good reason, he looked like a little bear. This type of dog is known to be very territorial, and aggressive. The dog was on the back corner of the trailer, and was on a chain. The chain was attached to a stake in the ground, at the corner of his doghouse. He would always bark at me whenever I would come over. Even though this would always annoy me as a kid I would just ignore it.

               I went to his house, with the dog barking the whole way, and knocked on the door. His mom answered the door, and I asked if he was home. She said yes and I asked if he could come out and play. He came out and we were playing in the front yard. While we were playing in the yard, the dog seen us and started barking at us. Of course me and him being kids, it didn’t take long for this to get very annoying to us. So eventually we decided to try to make the dog shut up. Well this really wasn’t a good idea, but then again we were kids so we didn’t really think too much about what we were doing. We started out yelling at it, when that didn’t work we got more aggressive and started to throw things at it. We threw pine cones and sticks at him. At this point the dog was going crazy. It seemed like the more we would try to get it to shut up, the more it would go crazy. This is when it pretty much turned into us teasing the dog.

              We would take turns getting close and wait for the dog to try to get us, then move back out of reach and watch him get caught by the chain. We would make him go back and forth trying to get us. I know this sounds really mean, but what can I say?  Kids can be so cruel. As we were teasing him his chain got tangled around the stake in the ground, and made his reach shorter. We continued to harass the dog. Eventually his chain came untangled and I was the unlucky one that he was coming for at the time. He grabbed my leg and pulled me to the ground. I didn’t know what to do, all I could do was scream for help. The dog kept grabbing my leg and thrashing his head back and forth. I mean I think most people have seen what a dog can do when he wants to hurt something. All my friend could really do was scream too. I mean if I was in his shoes I wouldn’t have been able to think of anything, I would have probably just screamed for help too.

           Luckily for me my brother must have heard us screaming from across the street. Him and his friend came to see what was going on. He grabbed a two by four, and hit the dog on the butt with it. The dog turned and tried to get him, but he got back out of reach real quick. I remember seeing the dog turn and start running back towards me, and thinking holy shit! I rolled back doing sort of a back flip, and got out of reach too. I’m still in shock and just sitting there. My brother picked me up and carried me back to the house. My mom came outside and seen my leg covered in blood, and freaked out.

              She ran inside and grabbed a towel, and came back out as quick as she could. Her and my dad put me in the car, she was using the towel to hold my leg up while we were driving to the hospital. I had three gashes on the back of my calf and one across the front of my leg. Luckily for my mom, the way she was holding my leg only let her see the front. She probably would’ve passed out if she had seen the back. I used to watch The Looney Toons Show  as a kid, and Bugs Bunny used to always say (I’m too young to die, I’m too young to die!) whenever something bad was happening. I remember saying that to myself the whole way to the hospital.

               We got to the hospital (Spalding Regional Hospital) and they took me rite in and took the towel off my leg. That’s when my mom finally seen the back of my leg. I also had a couple puncture wounds in my arm as well. They had to give me a shot in each gash to numb the wound. I still remember that sharp pain. I don’t remember any other pain really, just that one. They gave me 25 stitches in my leg, and 2 butterfly stitches in my arm. Then they sent me home all bandaged up.

              They ended up putting the dog to sleep (aka they killed him). My brother got his name in the paper and everything for saving my life. I learned a valuable lesson that day. Respect other animals because they can really mess you up. Looking back I feel bad about the whole thing. Not for me, but for the dog. I mean he was only doing what dogs are supposed to do. Which is protect there property or territory, I don’t know, I don’t think they should have put him to sleep. I feel like it was my fault for messing with the dog in the first place, and I got what I deserved.

           A week or so later we moved to Florida. I remember when we first got there. The first morning I was checking out the house because we got there late the night before. I decided to check out the front yard by myself, and when I walked outside I heard a dog barking down the street. I freaked out and started crying. There were two Boxers a couple houses down from ours. Boxer is another breed of dog that is big and look and sound mean. They had those electric leashes on, you know the ones with no fence but it shocks the dog when he goes to the edge of the yard. I remember being so scared to go by there. It affected me for a long time, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. It was a big part of my life and it taught me a couple of good lessons.

Me and reality tv

         I would like to start by saying most reality TV is garbage. Well actually it all is, pretty much all TV is. I guess you could learn some things from certain ones, and some teach you life lessons. But for the most part TV does rot your brain. I still cant help but watch it though. I mean I grew up on TV in way. I remember when I was a kid, and we got cable TV for the first time. Thats when it all happened. My brother would always watch MTV. Thats back when it was nothing but music videos. Now MTV is the main one responsible for reality TV shows. I even think they might have started this whole reality TV epidemic, with the Real World. Now it seems like every time I turn on the TV there's another reality show on. Guess that means there's a whole lot of people getting famous for nothing.
    
          I'm not gonna lie, I do like watching some of them. Like the Jersey Shore. I like this one because it;s really funny watching these idiots make a fool of themselves. They just recently went to Italy, and I actually just got back from vacation there. So now when I watch it I see all these places and it reminds me of my trip there. Other than that  i don't really like any of the other ones. My girlfriend loves them though. Seems like any time I walk in and she's watching TV its a reality show. She always watches the Keeping up with the Kardashians one. I don't like this one because like I said earlier, people getting famous for no reason. I mean what do they do, thats not even entertaining to me? But I still find myself watching that one to, just because its what's on the TV.

           I don't know? I guess you could say me and reality TV have a love, hate relationship. I mean I know its bad and probably makes me stupider just by watching it, but I cant help it. I try not to watch too much TV anyway, but I'm not very good at that either. I'm sure I'm not the only one though. I bet you could ask almost any american if they've ever watched reality TV and they're gonna tell you yes. I guess its just one of those things you really can't control because your brought up watching it. Well most of us anyway. I guess all you can do is try not to watch it, but that's easier said than done.

texting what's the world come too?

        Texting it's every were these days. I mean ever were you look some ones got there phone out texting. People even do it while they're driving. I mean that's just retarded. They say some one who is driving while texting is more dangerous than a person drinking and driving. I think it should have the same penalty then. Texting is so bad in the U.S. even our youth is affected by it. I see little kids probably around 10 years old, using cell phones and texting. I remember when I was that age, and the cool thing then was having a pager, or beeper. This little box that would beep when someone wanted to get in touch with you, it would show there number then you would have to go find a phone and call them back. Wow look how far we have came in just my lifetime, and I am only 26 years old. Imagine what they're gonna come out with in the next 20 years. Me I text all the time, and I don't know what i would do without my cell phone. I used to hate texting people because it took a lot longer to type something that I could have just told them in 5 seconds. Now I'm used to it and could probably text almost as fast as i could talk. I'm not sure if thats a good or bad thing? I know one thing and thats with the way technology is advancing before long we wont have to anything for ourselves. Thats not a good thing because then everyone is gonna be fat, and lazy. We already have enough of those people in the world today.

fast food and me.

    Me and fast food have a long and ongoing relationship. As a child I pretty much grew up on fast food. I mean my mom would usually cook when I was real little, but as i got older she slowed down on cooking and we began to eat out more and more. when I was around 8 or 9 years old, my parents got a divorce. I think thats when my mom really stopped cooking. I ate fast food before that, its just thats when we started doing it all the time. I used to love going to Hardee's for breakfast because they used real sausage and I loved there hash browns. If you don't know what Hardee's is its the same thing as Carl's Jr, it's just called Hardee's on the east coast. I also loved  Mc Donald's, I mean what kid doesn't like a happy meal. I remember when I was a kid I went there with my friend and his mom. she asked what we wanted and I wanted a double quarter pounder, she said there's no way your gonna eat all that. I argued that I would eat it all, she said OK but if you don't eat all of it, then I'm not ever getting it for you again and I said OK. Of course she was rite and I didn't finish it. So I mean i think its safe to say I grew up on fast food.

    Now I still love to eat fast food. Mc Donald's breakfast is my favorite. I love there sausage and egg biscuit, it's the bomb. I like to cook on the grill too so its not all fast food now. I don't know if toppers is considered fast food, but if it is I guess I'm guilty as charged. I go out to eat a lot but it's not always fast food, I like Outback Steak House, and stuff like that. My girl friends mom cooks a lot too, so I guess that's how I stay pretty healthy. I still cant help going out and getting some greasy cheese burger from some were, even though I know it's bad for me. It's not that I don't care about my health, but I did good so far on staying healthy so why not. Fast food has always been apart of my life and probably everyone else's that live in America too. I mean look around, it's every were. It kinda makes it hard not to eat it when it's so easy to do. It's probably not a good thing, but I don't know sometimes you cant help it. Sometimes you might be in a hurry to get some were, but you need to eat, so fast food is your only choice. In that case fast food is good thing. I guess you could argue both ways.