Inhaling Knowledge :: Personal Narratives Drugs Illegal Narcotics Essay

Inhaling Knowledge When I was a young girl, my dad and I would drive to Chinatown every third Saturday of the month to get his monthly dose of rice. Through the west side of Chicago we went. My dad always complained about the litter, the lack of cleanliness and how easy it would be to keep the city clean if everyone just took care of their own trash. Looking out the window, I remember seeing trash piled high on every corner, as if garbage had taken the place of grass. Graffiti covered every building we passed, broken windows everywhere. It always made me sad that people had to live in such an environment, but I can so vividly remember laughing at the sight of gym shoes tied together, hanging high above me from the telephone lines in this part of town. Every few blocks I'd see another pair, and another, and another! What a funny joke, I thought to myself. How did some one even get them up there? Little did I know that these shoes hung high in the sky, once bringing a smile to my face, would one day fil l my heart with sorrow and pain, threaten the binds that held my family so close together or almost take the life of my beloved sister. Never in my worst nightmare could I imagine something so right could go so wrong. I grew up in a family of three children, an older brother and a sister eighteen months younger, with two loving parents who would walk to the moon and back to keep us happy and healthy. I was one of the luckiest kids in the world, I used to tell myself, because when nothing else in my life was right, I always had my family to cheer me up and make my troubles disappear. I thought that is how each and every one of us felt, but I guess I was wrong. Some people have a talent of hiding how they are feeling; they keep her pain bottled up until one day when their bottle gets too full, it explodes. This is what happened to my sister, Susan. She was never one to be very open with her feelings or what she was thinking. I can still remember our weekly arguments about her not telling me what was going on in her life—school, friends, karate, boyfriends, work.