Who are you today? How did you get to where you are? Was it a terrible experience affected you to become the person you are now? Maybe it was your family or friends. Or how about your environment? Shoot, it could be all of the above! I believe that the death of Gary’s father, the influence of his friends, the rough situations he had to go through, like being a run away, and the actions of those around him all effected the person who he was in the book “Living Up the Street.”
Any loss can be hard to take as a kid. You could loose at a game of monopoly and you’d be heartbroken, so imagine how Gary felt losing his one and only father without any warning. Imagine how that type of loss can change a person. He himself was lost. He didn't know what to do or how to react. All he knew was now he had to step up and become the next man of the
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We are not exactly sure what caused Gary to runaway but we do know it was a betrayal of some sort from his family. In chapter ‘Black Hair’ Gary said, “They're cruel, I thought, and warned myself that I should never forgive them. How could they do this to me.” Being out on the street has to be hard enough and on top of that he was out on the street alone. He had no family to support him, no one to lend him a helping hand. He had to find a way to survive on his own. He got a taste of the real world. Nothing comes for free! You have to work if you want something ad that is exactly what he did. “...When I was a 7 year old runaway who ended up in Glendale, California, to work for Valley Tire Factory.”, is another thing that was said in the chapter ‘Black Hair”. Gary knew the only way to survive to his own was to get a job. He needed to earn the money to eat so he wouldn't starve to death because he had no other way to get his meals. Because of running away he had to figure out how to live on his own which taught him to be