Life aint easy growing up in East St. Louis. For me there only two ways out: Football or Music. The way I see it… if you from where I live you better forget about trying to be some kind of einstien and start working on your rap or start working on your game. Personally, I been working on my football skills. I play for our high school team and one day I finna be in the NFL. Our team aint got much but we have heart and we know that if we don’t play like it the last day of our lives we finna be stuck in ESL for eternity. Last summer, I was at football camp in some country style place in Illinois. I remember playing all them other teams and thinking to myself that they don’t even know that places like ESL exist. They played football like they were at some kind of cocktail party. Man...they musta been thinking that we were out to kill em...the way that we were hitting. But it aint like that at all, we was just playing for our life. Boys like them, they got a future even if they aint a good football player. Boys like us…man it’s like were destined for failure. Anyways, to get back to the original question…my daily life go something like this. I get up when my moms wake me up. My moms has always been a good mom, she provides us with the essentials and is always making sure me and my brothers and sisters are doing alright. I don’t have a father-he died when I was little…but I heard he was a good guy. I go to school(only b/c my mom wants me to) and I try to focus on certain things but I know that school is and will never be my thing. Besides; my test scores and grades are so bad that a boy like me aint never go to college on a academic basis. School is pointless anyways. In the 1st place, I don’t think half my teachers even know what they talking about and if they did they would never be able to control the class for long enough to get the point across. Yeah boy...ESL is messed up and needs help-that’s for damn sure. As is pretty clear by how I write in the 1st place-we don’t learn a hole lot. And to answer the next set of questions-I guess I would say that education or literacy doesn’t mean anything to me. Not one bit! Even if I was some kind of gifted kid my moms would never be able to pay for my college. Yeah… I mean I don’t try to come off bein angry and hateful-I mean I know racism, I know hate, I know injustice. I live it everyday! But what get me the most is that no one know about how we are living- not thoes boys at football camp, not the people in St. Louis even tho they so close, not no1 man-no1. Thats what makes life so hard…the fact that citizens of America are suffering and no1 come to our rescue or worse even knows we exist.