I'm too old for this meep.

I got to watch a little gangsta' action last night while gassing up the truck at my local FastStrip.
There were about five cars full of mexican teenagers parked at the pumps.
All of them were that kind of non-descript light brown, and were all wearing plain white t-shirts and khaki shorts. (This is the norm for gang-bangers around here. They blend together for plausible deniability.)
Well, I say parked at the pump, but really they were parked between the pumps. Right square in everybody's way. Fast food trash was all over the ground around their cars and the thumper music and gangster rap was pumping out loud and proud.
I pulled up and was able to back in just enough to reach the pump on the end. The only one the delightful young lads left room for.
They eyed me and I gave them that brief, calm, blank look that I use on the inmates.(The one that says; "I'm not interested, but if you want trouble, that's okay too." and went about my business.
I handed the clerk a $20, watching my truck through the window in case the little guys decide I'd been rude and wanted to give my truck a quick autograph.
I listened for a second as he nervously laughed about how one of the kids outside got mad at him for helping him get his trunk open.
I don't wanna know. (Why aren't there any cops around to shoo these kids away?)
Doesn't anybody care anymore?

Well, yeah, but I think the answer is that it just isn't worth it to most folks.
There are more and more kids with a chip on their shoulder from not knowing who the meep fathered them or having a dad that's a gangbanging loser too.
These kids don't think about the future. They truly believe that there's some kind of dignity in a life of killing guys for their wallets or for a streetcorner that they'll never own or lift a finger to improve.
They take it as a given that they won't live to see 20.
So they'll kill you.
Just like that.

Bang.

I walked out and started pumping my gas and watched a lone kid walk up to a car full of other kids, throw his arms out like a tough guy and yell "Yo homey, Where you FROM?!" Emphasis on the "from".

Aw meep.

For anyone not in the know, that's how you ask a gang member what gang he's in.
-What streets he claims are his.

Fortunately for the kid, they just ignored him. He asked once more and then tore off his shirt (to show off his manly 15 year old physique? -The kid weighed like 100lbs, max) and stomped off across the street.

I breathed a sigh of relief.
They were between me and the street. I would've had to drive through the gunfire to get to work.


It would be really easy to hate these kids. Watching any kind of special report on it on TV, you'd think they were pure, irredeemable evil.

But no. They're just ignorant and scared.
Eventually most of them hit 20, then 30 and are shocked that they did so. Many of them decide to straighten up their lives for their kids' sake.

This describes most of the inmates I work with.
Many, if not all of them spend their lives trying to keep their heads down and live a quiet life or they spend the second half of their lives trying to make up for being idiots for the first half.

People come around.

You just have to let the cops deal with the really bad ones, talk to the one's that'll listen and keep in mind that someday they'll be 40 years old, gassing up their car late at night in the middle of a buch of idiot kids and they too will wonder:
"Just who the meep are you fools trying to impress?"