How do you help people that sometimes don’t ever listen to you?  Ever since I was very young I would go up to the [removed] Rec half a block from my house.  The first time I went up there I could barely even walk.  I went up with my mom for Music Mondays.  This is when they have a “special guest” play on the guitar or banjo or some other weird instrument, and all the little kids would sit on the warm wooden floor of the gymnasium, eyes wide, diapers partially full, clapping their hands, just listening.  The songs were typically various versions of “Wheels on the Bus” or the ABCs.  This was when I practically fell in love with the [removed for personal safety] Recreation Center.

I’ll fast forward about ten years to when I was about eleven or twelve years old.  I still see the kids from Music Mondays almost every single day.  We often refer to ourselves as the “[removed] Crew” or the “‘[removed] from the [removed]”.  The members of the “[removed]” are my neighbor Charlie, Daron, Kemariah, and Dimitris.  Everyone knew everyone at the gym in Potrero Hill.  My favorite thing about the Rec Center is the diversity.  I was a little white boy, barely 4’7”.  My neighbor Charlie was a white boy just over 5’10”.  Daron was an African American boy about 5’7”.  Kemariah is an African American boy about 5’8”.  And Dimitris was an African American boy about 5’8’’ as well.  Daron, Kemariah, and Dimitris were straight out of the [removed] Projects.

The [removed] Rec is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful Rec Centers in the city.  It stands atop a hill at [removed] neighborhood.  On the side of the hill there is a children’s playground.  Walk up from the children’s playground and there’s at the Rec.  Next to the Rec there is a baseball diamond.  If I look from the baseball diamond I can see [removed], where the [removed] play to the left, and[removed], where the [removed] play, to the right.  Look straight and I can see the San Francisco Bay.  Inside the Rec there is a basketball court with a few rows of bleachers on the right side.  The old wooden floor creaks as I walk or run on it.  When the ball hits the rim of any of the six basketball hoops it makes a “ping” or “bonk” noise because the rims are slightly loose.  I have learned to love that noise.

The first few weeks of going up to the Rec I felt as if I was not well liked.  Every time I went up I would go up to the Rec I would hear many discriminations. 
“Hey white boy!”
“Y’all can’t play basketball with us.”
“Y’all ain’t no good.”
“I’m better because I’m black.”
“This some crip gang type s***.”
“What the is you doing here? Ain’t no game like frisco game.”
Most of the time I would just laugh it off or ignore it.   Nowadays I hear funnier comments with a lot less meaning behind it.
“Y’all better make a basket or you can kiss my big black butt”
“I’ll throw your butt outta this gym if you miss that shot boy!”
“What up my son?  Let’s play right now I’ll school y’all!”

The Projects is one of the most violent low income housing areas in the city of San Francisco.  Every night I hear echoes of gunshots going off from my house.  There are constant break-ins of cars at night, and sometimes even houses during the day.  The people who commit these crimes are the same people every time the police have told everyone in the neighborhood.  Why can’t they get these guys?  I ask my parents this question on probably a weekly basis though I always get the same “The jails in California are full.  They would rather have a murderer in jail or a pedophile than someone who smashes a car window because they see three quarters sitting on the dashboard.”  I am willing to bet the people who shoot at each other every night are the same people who break into cars every night. 

Basically, there are two groups of kids from the projects.  The ones who have loving parents, do well in school, and are respectful; and the kids who feel like no one loves them, don’t want to do well in school because “It don’t matter anyway!”.  The kids who don’t care about school tend to be more disrespectful to everyone.  When I first went up to the gym when I was about 10 I didn’t understand the groups of kids and why so many of them “hate white people.”  What did I ever do to these kids I have never even met before?  As I went up to the Rec more and more I had a sudden realization when I was about 13.  The parents of the kids who dislike white people also say they dislike white people.  One day I decided to ask why.  I couldn’t believe the answer I got.  The person said, “They did this to me, to my child, to my family.”  I didn’t know what to say.  When I went home that night I asked my dad what his thoughts were.  He said everyone handles different situations differently.

When I was about 14 I started asking all the kids at the Rec about their lives.  I was sometimes horrified by what I heard.  “My parents are drug addicts.”  “My father is in jail and my mother is a prostitute.”  “My mother has twelve children, she don’t care about me.”  I couldn’t believe what some of these kids had been through.  I figured that most kids just wanted to feel like someone cared about them.  I started helping them with homework and told them I was here if I needed to talk to them.  I feel like I have gotten through to some of these kids.  A lot of them call me at the end of the semester just to tell me they got a B in english or an A- in algebra.  These little things make them feel like someone cares.  In the summer everyone gets stupid.  People do very dumb things.  Like, “I bet you can’t break a window with this rock.” Or, “I bet you can’t hit that car with this egg.”  I try to talk kids out of this, but my attempts often fail.  The best thing I can do then is just leave.  Go home.  Don’t get in trouble. 

Over the summer between 8th grade and freshman year Kemariah moved away to [removed].  This left a huge impact on me.  He was one of my closest friends and he would stay at my house for lunch or dinner on a regular basis.  Kemariah is a great kid.  He wanted to go to SHC to play football, basketball, and track.  About a month ago though he called me to tell me he was going to [removed] High School in [removed] next year when he would be  a freshman.  He got an almost full scholarship to the school for track.  I congratulated him and proceeded to tell everyone at the Rec about his accomplishment.  Everyone seemed happy to him and called him to congratulate him.  Kemariah is one of the hardest working kids I know.  He always had a 4.0 GPA and is extremely kind to everyone.  I can tell he is going to go far in life and work his way out of the lower class and into the middle class, or even higher. 

I feel as if I actually make a difference at the Rec.  I can’t get through to every kid, or help them get an A on a math test, but I can try to help.  I have definitely become more aware of the world around me and the problems people have within my own community.  I hope to make an impact on more and more kids as I grow older, but sometimes they just need more than what I can offer.