This afternoon I took my lunchbreak and went over to Hadley Park and relaxed a minute.

It was truly a time of reflection as the memories of my childhood flooded my mind.

I remember growing up in Liberty City and going to Hadley Park to play. I remember when Hurricane Andrew hit Miami and we drove through the neighborhood to see the damage. Hadley Park, whose trees were so huge that you could park a car behind a single tree

and it would be hidden, was now filled with skinny little anorexic trees. Hurricane Andrew had demolished them all, leaving huge tree trunks, ripped from the ground by the roots and scattered everywhere.

Despite the loss of human life and the devastation to so many homes across Dade County, the experience of Hurricane Andrew was an exciting one for a skinny 13 year old and her friends. The start of school was postponed due to the crisis and there was no electricity for days. I remember everyone taking out their grills and barbecuing everything they could find to eat. We had to take cold baths and read by candlelight, our clothes sticking to our bodies due to the extreme heat of the summer.

It was wild living in Liberty City. They called our neighborhood Gun Shot City, my street was ran by the John Doe boys who shouted, “John Doe, John Doe, weed, base and blow. Walk by, drive by you don’t get high!” to cars passing by.

In elementary school we knew something was wrong when we saw our Mama walking down the street to walk us home. She would greet us and then have us take a different route home due to an ongoing gun fight between the boys on the block. When we first moved in that neighborhood I remember us spending many nights sleeping on the floor. We had a first floor apartment which made us vulnerable to the stray bullets that peppered the night sky.

For some reason I never got caught up in the drama. The street life never appealed to me. I was too busy visiting the library checking out as many books as I could so I could dissappear into my room with a glass of kool-aid and some cookies and read until my mind couldn’t store anymore images of young girls whose problems were as devastating as the cute boy at school who didn’t notice them.

By reading so many books, I created a reality for myself. I began to think that the characters in these books were my role models and that life consisted of being the most popular girl in school and going away to college to become something great.

Those books by Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary and Betsy Haynes shaped the person that I am today. I learned from them what kind of person people liked to be around. What made some girls popular and what made others hated and I likened myself to the popular nice girls.

Although we lived in low income housing I always thought I was well-off. I never had to ask for anything twice. I always had new outfits for every occassion and my hair was always done. Even though they didnt know it, my parents were teaching me that if I was obedient and worked hard I could have anything that I wanted.

I was never extravagant. I didn’t own a name brand purse until recently but I had the best in my eyes. I always did what my parents told me to do because I knew that if I did, they wouldn’t say no to me. I began to dream far beyond my neighborhood limits, applying my reality to the entire world. I believed that if there was anything in this world that i wanted I could have it if I tried. I believed I was going to have the best because no one was any better than me.

If Oprah could be a star and have a talk show, so could I. If Maya Angelou could inspire millions with her writing so could I. What seperates the successful people from the people who sit back and dream is the ability to go out and do something about their dreams.

I may not be a baller right now but I have made up my mind that I will be ballin one day. I may not be getting paid millions to speak, but one day I will fill entire stadiums filled with people who need an encouraging word.

How can I dream so big? Why not? Any other successful person is just the same as me, they had to start somewhere.

The only question is how will my story unfold?