FAT "T"

Fast food in my family had always been a treat. It had never been something my sisters and I could get anytime we wanted. No matter how much we asked for any sort of fast food, my parents would always answer back with a big fat “no”. The only times we would be able to have any burger, fries, or things like that would be if my parents were in a good mood after we went to church, which we did every Sunday, but most of the time they would give us the usual “no”. Another time we would be able to enjoy some greasy food would be when we would go on our two hour road trips to visit my grandmother. We would hate to go because of the fact that it was so far away, but we would think of the advantage of having our way with the fast food for a change.


There was one year back when I remember Mc Donald’s having a really legit burger special, each burger was about 29cents, and each cheese burger was about 30 some odd cents. This was the number one treat that we loved, and my parents rewarded us with, because of the fact that we could get so many little burgers for such a low price. It wasn’t healthy but we rarely got burgers so we were happy to enjoy such a delicious treat.

Now days, fast food has become just as important as remembering to walk. The fact that I have to go to school early in the mornings, waking up late and not having enough time to make a good breakfast at home makes me drive-thru joints in the morning. Although waking up early in the morning to make breakfast is difficult, I have succeeded these past few days since the beginning of this semester. But the one thing that is in a way messing me up, in fact is that I get out of school and I get hungry. Like always I find a way and excuse of saying to myself “just this once”. It makes it harder when I pass all the fast food places on the way home from school. Not only does fast food come in when I get out of school, but also when I decide to hang out with my girlfriend and both of us are hungry but neither of us wants to take the time to make a good home cooked meal. I also get fast food whenever I hang out with friends because when we all get hungry the first thing everyone thinks of getting is a quick burger or pizza. Even at times when I’m not hungry and only one or two friends gets hungry, I still end up going with them to buy food. That’s when I always see the picture of the strawberry shake and my mouth waters until I give in and buy it.

Even though I know that fast food is bad for me, I think that one thing that keeps me eating this junk is the fact that I still work in a fast food joint.

before<-- ^now^ -->then

I was born in Pasadena, California but raised in Oxnard most of my life. I use to live in north Hollywood for a few years where some of my family lived at, I also lived in Pasadena and after my parents got bored of those places we moved into Oxnard. I’ve been living here in Oxnard for about fourteen years now. I grew up wanting to be a fire fighter, like most little kids do. I think it was just all the lights on the fire trucks and the uniforms that the fire fighters wore that caught my attention. Another thing I wanted to be was a cop when I was small; I actually took it into consideration about two years ago when I was almost recruited into the marines. I had talked to a few marines about joining because I thought that I might want to be Military Police. I took the their assessment test and all but once they filled me in on all the info, I wasn’t all that interested like I thought I was going to be. Although I thought that I wanted to be a fire fighter or cop when I was growing up, I found myself to be interested in taking my broken toys and fixing them. Sometimes I would take the part of one toy and put it on a different toy just so it would work. I think this is why I took interest in cars. As I started learning more about cars I realized that working on cars might be a better career choice for me.


I am currently working on getting my AS at OC, and then I plan to transfer to a four year school. To do this I am just taking all my general classes, with some auto classes on the side. When I took an auto class this past semester I really enjoyed the fact that it’s not just books but it’s a hand on job as well. Plus we had the benefit of taking our own cars into the school shop to work on them if they had a problem, which worked out in the sense that we were learning and fixing our own problems. I even like working on my own car at home and friends cars when we find a problem. I also have a part time job at a fast food joint in order to get the cash I need for school as well as things that I might need as a mechanic.

In the next two years I hope to finish my general classes and transfer to a university where I can learn more about cars and major in mechanics. I’m not sure exactly what school yet, but I will look more into it in this next year. After I finish school I’ll try to get a job as a mechanic fixing cars in a dealership such as Nissan, Toyota, Honda, ect. Later, after a couple years of experience in school and hands on working in a dealership, I hope to be able to open up my own shop.