Rite of Passage

Do you remember your first shell tops? I do. I was 13 or 14 and the shell tops helped me feel like a real hard vato. Technically, I'm not hispanic; but I paid close attention in Spanish class and my best friend was Maria Torres who, despite being light skinned with freckles and having two older brothers who spent all their time playing video games and Magic the Gathering instead of dealing drugs and getting arrested, gave me some kind of an in with the other cholas. At the very least she had some chola cousins. We never went so far as to shave off our eyebrows and draw them back on, but we used whole cans of mouse to keep our hair perfectly stiff and crunchy, lined our lips with dark purple liner, wore white crop tops with baggy jeans, and gold necklaces with our names written in cursive. Well, actually, I never did find a "Cameron" necklace. You can see how hard it was to be a gangster in Cypress, California.

Thank God we didn't have digital cameras to record my adolescence.



I hope Roan develops fond memories of his first shell tops.