I was sitting in the tattoo parlor with my head resting on the black leather chair staring at my mom from the corner of my eye. I could not tell if she wanted to curse everyone in the room or cry, I came to the conclusion that it was it was probably both. In my mom’s words, I was getting a hole drilled into my nose. In my words, it was a nose piercing. This was the biggest fight I’ve ever had with my mom. She was completely opposed to the idea of me getting one and we had argued about it for almost a year. At one point we didn’t talk to her for a week. Tears were shed and sarcastic remarks were thrown around until she finally agreed to let me do it. So I found myself getting my nose pierced by and guy who was definitely too old to be wearing a leather jacket and a face filled with so many piercing I didn’t want to count. This, while my mom stared everyone down with a furry that could burn the building down. The funny thing is, that as the needle pierced my noise I kind of regretted it. It …show more content…
I have learned to tweak every little detail about me to blend in to the point where sometimes I don’t if it’s me or if it’s all an act. It’s horrifying. In retrospect, it is the reason I am in a university and other Latinos are in community college. If I had showed up to my scholarship interviews looking a little less than presentable or prepared, I doubt I would have received as much financial support as I did. I figured out how to crack the code of the system, I dressed and acted as white as I could. It’s something colleges and scholarships understand. They want people to represent minorities, to show that they are diverse but not anyone too radical or loud or slightly interesting. This is one of the reasons that not many Latinos graduate or attend college. Opportunities are scarce and if they do exist, it’s like the