ghetto childhood.

My mom didn’t really let me play with many of my elementary ‘school friends’ when i was little…because

1.      She didn’t know their parents and didn’t feel comfortable letting her children play in strangers homes….

2.      She didn’t want me to get kidnapped and crazy murdered.

Growing up next to Oakland in silly little Fremont, I can now understand why I thought my mom was so ‘mean’ when it came to me not being able to go over to their houses often. Kids in Fremont got snatched up like frickin CANDY.  Candy I tell you! A little girl I was friends with was chased home after school one day by some big scary man, and the only way she got away from her attacker was hiding in some bushes until he stopped searching for her. Bless her skinny little heart. The next day the school sent out a letter to the parents warning them about this creep lurking around the school grounds and trying to steal chillins. And THEN there was that time that the school had a lockdown because some guy in my neighborhood had a gun and was holding his grandma hostage for hours and was on crack or something? I don’t know. That was weird. That warranted a legit lock your doors and lock your windows lockdown in all the classrooms and we didn’t get to go home for HOUUUURRRSSS. Though  i thought it was super duper fun in my mind, I would have peed my pants if I were in my mothers shoes. oh and THEN there was that legit shooting in brandi's complex across from the junior high. Of COURSE she didn’t let me play at random peoples houses she didn't know!!!!!! Good gosh.

            SO ANYWAY…there were lots of creeps round my part of town. Did I know this? No. Was I aware that many of them were the older siblings/parents of the children I associated with? No. So mother, you had every right to not let me play too often at strange people’s homes. (Had you pulled up a map of the sex offender registry of my city...you'd see little red dots probably fill the whole thing. Actually, the whole map would just be one big blob of red sex offender flags. ggeuhhh.)

However, there was the occasional instance when I would incessantly cry and beg my mother to let me go over to my friends homes for an afternoon..(im sure only after meeting them first)…and I remember one time I was at my friend house...lets call her Sarah. Sarah was one of my school BFFs in my early childhood years..so when I finally went to her house, it was like a whole different world. I was at Sarah’s actual house?!? Woooooooo! (its like when you see a teacher outside of school, only BETTER! And with free snacks I never was allowed to eat! Oreos! Gushers! Pudding!) 

Well, after we got bored of playing in her house and tip toeing around her large scary grandpa who always wore overalls…(and also legitimately offered children beer)….we went outside into the garage. I remember noticing some weird looking thing on a separate table over on the workbench part of the garage….it was big, had funnels and tubes all sorts of funny looking things…. I went over to touch it, and Sarah, with a look of warning, says..’oooo don’t touch that!!! That’s my grandpas. Its off limits.’ Okay. Weird I thought, but whatev. It looked cool so I guess I  could admire from afar. What a cool, weird, test tube funnel swirly weird thingy made of junk.

Grow up 10 years and realize her grandpa had a meth lab in their garage.

Lulllzzz.