Growing up in the streets of Los Angeles one will be caught into the temptations that are out there. One of the biggest temptations being caught into gangs. It is pretty hard not joining one especially when you see all your friends joining a certain crew or gang. This temptations are brought upon you during your junior high years, when everyone wants to fit in and find all the friends on can find. Fortunately for me a incident occur that would change my life forever.
             It was a hot summer day in September; just two days before my birthday, I was only twelve years old. I was just a little kid not even in my teens. A couple of friends decided that after school we were just going to hang out in front of my building. It was five of us and we were just sitting and watching the girls come out of school from a near by high school. The friends that I was hanging out with were newly friendship that I had come into. We were hanging out and whistling at girls and making jokes
             After a while we saw a blue Ford Mustang pass by. We didn't pay much attention to it. We figured that there wasn't anything to worry about. Then it passed a second time and as I turned and looked at the car my friend just to the left threw out a gang sign with his hands. Since I wasn't looking at him I didn't see him throw the sign out.
             A couple of hours passed by and my friend brought up an interesting conversation. He mentioned that I should join a little crew that he had recently joined; the funny part being that I was stupid enough to give it a lot of thinking into it. He was giving me a lot of lies on how if you join that you would have a lot of friends and people would respect you. But, he left out a pretty good part out; he forgot to mention what would about to happen next.
             It had gotten dark and at that age one doesn't worry about
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