To set up the background my family owns a deli which is unique to the situation at the time cause there were only two places I could go other than the deli, my friend’s house on the same block and my other friend’s backyard in the same block. I could be considered as having strict parents my father once told me “I don’t even want to see you crossing the street”. But he said that in Spanish since he told me I was already good at English he told me to only speak to him and my mom in Spanish so that I can practice it and understand others.  I hated these restrictions and I wish I could be like everyone else, some kids went wherever they wanted to go and I had to ask to go to my friend’s house 10 seconds away in Spanish. Why can’t I speak my easiest language to make things easier for me Looking back, I appreciate my dad for doing this because there are a lot of dangerous people anywhere you go so he was just trying to protect me. As well as using foul language which helped me create a border around my language so that I can only use foul language around friends. I started to face the real world first then others and have experienced hardships and struggles while still having a great childhood that I don’t regret. 

At the time I was a 12-year-old Dominican with my group of friends also being Dominican, it was a group of 6. Everyone had their differences but all had things we loved doing. One similarity between us and the whole block is that majority spoke spanish almost everybody if not everybody was Hispanic. As of today my 6 friends remain in contact but don’t talk to each other like we used to. It just took someone to move away to mess up the group. Joshua, the first guy, loved to play soccer he liked video games so he was the big one in the group. We gathered in his grandmother’s backyard along with his cousin Randy who was a gamer and the person we would have to force to come outside to be with the group. He would even lie saying he needed to use the bathroom but instead went inside to play. Henry the youngest and now that I look back I feel bad for a cause he would do everything for us, anything we tell him to do he would do even if it could possibly hurt him. He weirdly had so much energy because he never got tired. Armani was rarely there, a good thing because he would always look for problems with random people, he loves getting into fights, and he is Andy’s young uncle. Lastly, Andy, the glue of the group would gather all of us in places, we meet as a group almost every day as he would gather us. We really cared about video games because in our free time we stay entertained. To be honest, if you were to leave us alone playing video games and not saying anything then we’d stay playing the whole day. There was so much space in the backyard and even though there were fences protecting these areas we were so good at climbing them. There was a whole playground left by a daycare that was now reopened but back then was closed which I don’t have the reason for, we had to climb the fence to access it. We would hang out anywhere in the block even with my dad’s strictness. He always thought I was at the backyard or Andy’s house we were really just posted up anywhere in the block, either we were chilling on the stairs or playing in the playground. The superintendent of the building gated us for a good reason too because we broke the door to the front of the building we graffitied the wall we would play inside the building. Sometimes we would have access to sports equipment to play baseball or basketball. The superintendent then threw our sports equipment out so we would have to buy new ones. We had a daily mix of tag, soccer, basketball, call of duty, NBA 2K, and even mischievous activities like ding dong ditch which is the main focus of this story. 

One day we all gathered like a regular normal day other than Armani not being there, the usual. We just finished playing cops and robbers and drinking some water, I came up with the idea of ding dong ditch but we talk to the person that answers the door, Henry being the experiment rat, goes first and knocks on the door, but no one answers, then he proceeds to kick the door looking back I don’t know why he did that he should have just gone to the next door. We were all laughing as we were watching from the staircase. Someone answers the door offering candy to henry, henry is 10 years old the sight of candy electrifies him, the guy was talking to henry for what seemed like 2 minutes trying to convince henry of something. We just saw him enter the apartment, all of us except for randy who we told to watch if they came out of the apartment, everyone else immediately ran and went downstairs to Joshua’s apartment, and we called the cops from Joshua’s grandma’s house. They took 5 minutes to get to the building because the precinct is 10 blocks away. They knock on the door no answer so they broke it open, the guy had no gun and found henry sitting on the couch with the guy cooking. He found out that the guy that offered henry candy was a 2 time-registered sex offender. My heart dropped, Fortunately, nothing happened to henry. The community is a tight community so everybody knows what happens if something happens. So everyone noticed this guy had moved into their building but me being a kid I didn’t really know because why would my parents be worried if I’m technically not even supposed to be there. This is a key moment in my life because if I never bought up the idea of the activity it would have never happened. I was also not supposed to go to this building as it was on the other block. Which was not my idea it was Andy’s. I was punished for 2 months as I could not meet up with my friends at all. I was forced to stay at home where we played with each other over the game online. Henry was not able to play since he didn’t have a console to play on. I recently contacted Henry and asked him about how it went down. Henry didn’t mean to kick on the door, he got the idea from when we normally ding dong ditched we kicked the door. The problem with that is that we ran right after and although that wasn’t the worst that could’ve happened for all I know someone could have pointed a gun out at henry. Henry saw the candy and got lured in he said at the time he didn’t think anything of it and the guy told him that he has more inside. As soon as Henry entered he got suspicious as he sat on the couch he felt scared not knowing what would happen to him. He even told me that he was hoping for us a bunch of 14-year-old kids to go and save him. The issue with that is we didn’t know if he had a weapon. Henry remembers one thing and one thing only from the guy, he told Henry if he wants to play. As soon as that happened Henry heard a knock thinking it was us but the police screamed NYPD open the door. Henry remembers the guy starting to panic looking frantically around henry thinks he was looking for a hiding place but it was too late as the police already entered the apartment looked at Henry and immediately ran at the guy tackling him to the ground. I would say that one of the most important things you can use your language for is communication because it can go a long way to prevent things. If my parents would have communicated with me that a weird guy moved in there I would never go near that area.