the crash

I used to be the biggest racer when driving anywhere up until last year summer. Every day my friends, Chris and Enrique (a.k.a. Crack), and I would look for something to do since we didn’t have school yet, and none of us really had a job yet. We would go to the beach sometimes but that got boring after a while. So one afternoon while we were looking for stuff to do, we decided to go to the mall. Since we had gone to the Ventura mall so many times we thought it’d be best to try going to the Thousand Oaks mall. Since it was going to be a long drive, Chris and I decided to invite our girlfriends, so it wouldn’t be that boring and also so it would be more people. We also invited Chris’s sister, Jessica, and her boyfriend, Jonney. After Chris picked up his girlfriend, Lily, and Jessica and Jonney, they met up with me and my girlfriend, Monique, as well as Crack (always the spare tire in our crew) at my house. 

Once everyone was together we arranged who was going in whose car, depending on the weight the car could carry, as well as the performance the cars made on the roads we were going to take. It ended up being Crack in his own car, Chris and Lily in Chris’s car, and me, my girlfriend, Jessica and Jonney in my car. Thus we began our trip to the Thousand Oaks mall.

My friends and I have always had a passion for cars and speed; we like to live the fast life. So since we were going to the mall we thought taking a short cut through the back roads would not only be fast, but fun as well. We had been through the back roads once before so I felt pretty confident about speeding through the little streets and tight turns in between the mountains. Since we had been through these roads before, we also knew that hardly any cars passed through there, and the sun was out, so these things gave us a good advantage. The whole way there we began speeding and passing each other. My friends and I kept going on opposite lanes to try to get next to each other. We kept a steady pace because we just wanted to get there fast.

 Finally, after a good half an hour drive, we arrived to the mall. We wondered through the stores looking at random things we didn’t need in order to pass the time. After we got bored of the stores we went outside of the mall where they have the movie theater. After staring at the movies that were going to be playing that night for a good two minutes I asked everyone if anyone was up for staying to watch a movie. By this time it was around 8pm or 9pm so everyone was tired, and since we still had the drive back home we all decided it was best to go home and get some rest for the next day.

On the way home we began speeding through the long stretches of roads to get to the mountain side short cut, as we like to call it. I led the way on the way back with Monique, Jessica, and Jonney in my car and the rest following in their own cars. Unlike on the way to the mall, it seemed to be as dark as midnight, so it made it harder to see the roads and twice as thrilling to drive on.

Once we got on the same stretch of mountain as we had earlier in the day, we couldn’t see anything anywhere. The guys and I thought it would be kind of fun to see who could race down the mountains the fastest. With the little moon-light that shun upon the trees around and on the cold dark mountains I saw a few turns and drops but this did not make me slow down. As we approached the first drop and turn I could feel my heart racing from the rush that I was getting. It was better than the thrill that you get inside your stomach on a roller coaster. I could also hear everyone in my car yelling at me that we were probably going beyond the speed limit. I kept ignoring them because of the adrenaline that had kicked in; it seemed like too much fun for me to just stop. Right after about the first two turns I could hear Monique telling me to kick back and slow down. I kept telling her that we were going the limit, but she wasn’t dumb.

Going towards the last turn I saw the great opportunity to slide the car at a great speed, so I took my chances. It was a perfect turn, really steep and sharp. I turned on my high beams that way I would be able to get the best view of the dark road. I sped up without really thinking “What if I crash and someone gets hurt?” or any of that.  As I began my last enjoyable slide I realized that with the speed that I was traveling and the sharpness the small turn was, I wouldn’t make it. I tried slowing the car a bit but before I knew it the car was too close to the right shoulder of the lane, where usually there is either gravel or dirt. I didn’t want the brakes to lock up on me so I didn’t press on the brake all the way, but knowing I was too close the shoulder, without thinking about the consequences, I hit the brakes all the way causing us to skid down the turn. This is when I started thinking “We’re about to roll off of the mountain!” luckily we were saved by a guardrail.  

My friends behind me saw what had happened, and like any other person that sees a crash, they pulled over. First, we made sure that everyone was safe. Then, after looking at the car a bit, even though some people were scared of driving back, we decided it was best to drive home and check out the damage there.

When we got to my house everyone immediately got off the cars and came to check out mine. My dad saw us all from the window so he too came outside to see what was going on. He already knew how I drove at time so he got mad when he saw the car. “You were racing and driving dumb again like always weren’t you!?” he said to me. I responded with an excuse so he wouldn’t be as mad, “No, I was barely going five miles over the speed limit.”

In the morning when the sun was shining I looked at my car to see how badly I damaged it. As I looked at the broken headlight, scratched bumper and destroyed fender, I thought to myself, “This is going to cost a lot.” The car had some frame damage along with a crooked hood. That same day a few hours later I called up a buddy of mine to see what we could do about the damage. We ended up taking part of the car apart, and we got the fender off to fix along with the bumper. The headlights got replaced because one was broken and I didn’t like the fact that one light would be new and the other one old. After making my car look decent enough to drive, and seeing how scared everyone was, I decided it’d be best to play it safe on the roads from now on.

About Cuervo

Jose Sosa is a 50 year old, “going on 25”, male attending college. Instead of using his real name, Jose prefers to be called Cuervo. His current schedule is pretty chill but at the same time full. While going to school full time, he carefully balances his part time job so that he doesn’t get overwhelmed by both. On Fridays and Saturdays he says he plans to do “nothing” because these are the only days he has off from both school and work. On Sundays, and sometimes during the week, he does community service for church by ushering and helping the band. At the church, he likes seeing friends because it strengthens him.  Since he is working as a drug and alcohol counselor, Cuervo believes he is a role model to his clients. The three words that Cuervo used to describe himself were life, laugh and love because each word has a meaning to him. Life stands for living and enjoying it the best way he can. Laugh stands for enjoying the gift of laughter and making others laugh. Love makes everything worthwhile. In his spare time, when he’s alone, he enjoys kicking back, watching TV (mostly educational channels), and biking. When he’s with friends, he likes to go bowling or to festivals. He enjoys pretty much every type of food, but the one thing he does not like is Brussels sprouts.

One of the things he likes about college is meeting interesting, new people. He enjoys getting a challenge out of the work from school. Cuervo believes cost in college should be improved. The books and cost of classes are too expensive so he suggested that the school should lower the prices. Also he believes that classes are ridiculous for the reason that they could be organized better. He says that some classes are big in size but little people, and some are small in size but contain greater amounts of people, making it more crowded and in a way they are unbalanced.

Since his parents live in San Diego, he only gets to visit them about three times a year. He gets along more with his siblings from his dad’s side of the family. From his dad’s side of the family, Cuervo has three brothers and two sisters. When he visits his family, they usually like to have barbeques and kicking back. In the past five years he’s been having good communication with his dad since they hadn’t gotten along as much before because of personal reasons. Both Cuervo and his dad enjoy collecting coins and stamps, but he didn’t know this about his dad since they didn’t have good communication for a great amount of years. 

When I asked him about what he thinks he will be doing in five years, he answered by saying that he would like to have a recovery ranch for at risk youth.  Cuervo would also like to take them out of the city environment. He also wants to teach them a different, better, way of life.

failure thanks to the phone :P

Even though texting can keep your social life at a high level, it sometimes affects your English skills by bringing your essay scores lower. At first, when you barely start getting the hang of texting, you tend to spell out every word, and write good sentences. After a while, you start to look for short cuts in writing words, such as writing “u” instead of “you”, or “ppl” instead of “people”. Or maybe you’ll even come up with abbreviations, such as that “omg” means “oh my goodness”, or that “lol” means “laugh out loud”. After a while of this, your brain puts the proper spelling of words in the lost and found section of your memory box. Then, next thing you know, it’s time to write an English paper. You write the essay, no problem, and turn it in. but when you get it back from the teacher you have a lot of red marks on it! As your flipping through the pages to find out why you got a low score on it, you notice that all the red marks are from words as simple as “u” that you misspelled. As you try to go back and fix your errors, you realize that texting has taken over and led you to another failed paper.

reality TV

I know that there are some people out there that are all in love with reality TV. Unlike them I actually hate these types of shows. I don’t really have anything good to say about them. People have told me before, “Maybe if you just watch one show you’ll get into the show and you’ll be hooked!” (Actually my girlfriend said that).Well that was a pile nonsense. I mean I have tried watching them, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t know how people can find them interesting at all. You can tell right away that all the people on the show are just actors. They act too over dramatic and they only do it to be on TV, so even if they say “it’s not acting it’s the real thing”, they are still getting paid for it so I would still consider them actors.


I think the only reason people go on these shows in the first place is so that they can become famous, and these days’ people seem to be doing anything possible just for that one second of fame, or just for one person to remember their name. That’s kind of sad because they go as far as exposing themselves as idiots on TV just for the fame.

The only reason people tune into these shows is because they try to catch your attention by ending with a dramatic scene. They try to come up with new ways to drag the viewers into watching it all the time. This is why I would rather spend my time doing something else. It might sound mean but these shows are mostly for people who have nothing better to do but sit on their couches and watch the lives of others. I guess this is why I would rather just avoid watching any reality shows over all.

As for how these shows influence our society, I have to say it’s not a good influence. Since these shows are filled with fake people, they just influence the viewers to be the same. They make guys and girls act like someone who they’re not. They may even be acting like someone that deep inside they hate. The only reason they act this way is because thanks to the shows, guys and girls think that this is the only way they can fit in with the rest of the world. The worst part is that not only do these shows influence older guys and girls, but they mostly influence young teenagers. This means that at a very young age kids find an excuse to act like someone their not. Another reason why it is a bad influence is because they make it easier for people in our society to turn into lazy people. They do this in the way that if someone watches a show and gets too addicted to it, then they have just found an excuse to sit on the couch all day and tune into the shows. Sadly however, these shows will keep being produced until people can find something better to do with their lives.

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.