People hate Michael Jackson.<\/p>\n
But at a time, his music was the only one that I was privy too.<\/p>\n
The morning started like any other. The skies over East Los Angeles were overcast but the day would eventually turn hot and insufferable. At the moment though, I felt relaxed and jaunt listening to the tunes of MJ’s Dangerous album on my hard earned Walkman.<\/p>\n
It was at the corner of Hammel and Gage Avenue that the altercation happened.<\/p>\n
He was a young man about my age but experienced beyond my years I think. He wore a crisp white shirt, a cleanly shaved bald head and a taught laundered pair of khaki pants one size too big.<\/p>\n
At the intersection he stood. Confident and wearing a killer look that I interpreted as meaning business.<\/p>\n
I took it seriously.<\/p>\n
He hastily asked to empty my pockets. In shame and knowing that it wasn’t much I showed the the paltry allowance I had earned for bus fair. He did not care. $7.00 was enough and I gave it to him as I looked as what I considered to be a gun but was obviously his hand pointing at me under his clothes.<\/p>\n
As items felt out of my pockets he laughed!<\/p>\n
A pencil? A skinny wallet filled with school ids and lunch tickets?<\/p>\n
Finally there was my Walkman. The one that had taken me months to earn. The one for which I had saved every penny, dollar and dime my parents had given me.<\/p>\n
And now this bald headed ruffian wanted it.<\/p>\n
I was scared and I gave it to him.<\/p>\n
I wanted to live and I didn’t want to take the chance that there was a real gun under his shirt. People had died in my neighborhood for much less..<\/p>\n
He looked at it and smiled and then took the CD out?<\/p>\n
“Michael Jackson?, what kind of stupid music is that?” he said and chucked the delicate disk on the floor.<\/p>\n
Then he ran out onto the streets.<\/p>\n
My ego was hurt! He had stolen from me. He had laughed at my music.<\/p>\n
He took my safety net away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People hate Michael Jackson. But at a time, his music was the only one that I was privy too. The morning started like any other. The skies over East Los Angeles were overcast but the day would eventually turn hot and insufferable. At the moment though, I felt relaxed and jaunt listening to the tunes of MJ’s Dangerous … Continue reading “MJ”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hugotorres.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}