Our home was a two bedroom house, so my parents had one bedroom and the three kids had the other bedroom. In a house where the bedrooms had no doors, this presented a problem when I was a high school student and had to study late. Turning the lights on in any room would shine light into every room (except the bathroom). So, after a late return from a baseball or basketball away game, I would do my homework in the bathroom with the door closed so that the lights wouldn’t wake-up everybody. There was no clock in the bathroom, so I remember finishing my trigonometry or calculus homework and then realizing it was one or two in the morning.

I have fond feelings towards that old house. Because I was embarrassed to invite friends over, I always thought that I was ashamed of it. Maybe I did feel this way during my elementary, middle and high school days. But, one year, when I was a Junior or Senior at Stanford, I came home for the summer only to find that my dad was rebuilding the house. The exterior had already been re-done and there were no interior walls yet, just the studs. When I saw it, it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I thought to myself, “What have you done,” and “Why was I not consulted about this?” My dad’s explanation for this is that he had planned to rebuild the house all along. My mom says that what actually happened is that my dad was trying to fix the roof, and that when they removed the roof panels, part of the house caved-in. Apparently, the roof was holding the house together. At some point, I had to admit that it was my dad and little sister living in the house and that the makeover was probably warranted. I do miss that house.

I have two sisters, one older and one younger. I am a middle child so I always maintain that I had the identity crisis. Of course, my sisters say that I got special treatment because I was a boy, and there’s probably some truth in that. I remember playing the typical boy games like trompos (tops), canicas (marbles), video games, and all kinds of sports. But I was good at jacks and hop scotch too. We played badminton and baseball a lot in the backyard and would often throw the Frisbee in the street in front of our house. Monopoly and Scrabble were the board games of choice. Of course, when video games hit the scene (Atari & Colecovision), then those took over as the primary source of entertainment.

At North Grammar Elementary, we had fun times. Tether ball was one of my favorite games. I remember that one of the most fun things we would do is to take off our belts and chase after a type of black wasp with orange wings that we used to call “chupa huesos” (bone suckers). None of us wanted to find out what it felt like to have our bones sucked. Fortuitously, no one ever got stung by the “chupa huesos.” We would also make the occasional sacrifice of a horned toad to the gods for rain. Poor creatures. Apparently, we didn’t even do the sacrifice properly, because the rains never came. In Intermediate School, we learned how to flesh out tarantulas from their “holes in the ground” and to have tarantula battles.

I don’t have much in the way of memories that pertain to our home life. I attribute it to the fact that when you are poor, every day seems like every other day. I remember general activities but not how old I might have been when I was doing them. There aren’t a lot of photographs to jog the memory. I think photographs help to cement memories since they serve as visual reminders of the past. Emotion is another good “recorder” of memories, but since I don’t have a typical kind of emotional access then that was no help in terms of my ability to develop memories.

There are a few memorable experiences. There’s that time that I almost burned down the house and my sister, Celi, along with it. I was fascinated with fire. I hid behind the curtains in the living room to play with matches. It wasn’t long before the curtains caught fire. My dad was at work and my mom was over at Abuela’s house about four blocks away. I froze and didn’t know what to do. My sister actually put out the fire, but in so doing her dress caught fire. I think she told me “hablale a mama” (go get mom), and that’s when I finally did something. I started running to our grandma’s house. She ran after me, her dress still on fire. I was running and crying. My sister fell while she was running and her fall extinguished the flames. I considered it a miracle, the first time I brushed up against the divine. I can’t imagine life had the house burned down and my sister been seriously injured or worse.

I also remember when Hurricane Allen hit the gulf coast area. Our house was near the arroyo (creek). In fact, our street served as drainage for a quite a few neighborhoods. It wouldn’t take much for our street to become a raging river. A lot of the neighbors’ kids were allowed to go out and play in the raging water, but we weren’t allowed even though it was the thing we most wanted to do. When Hurricane Allen hit, we had to lift all of our furniture and belongings about five feet off the floor on saw horses. We abandoned our house for a couple of days and stayed at my Tio Popo’s house because he lived up on a hill. Tio Popo is my great uncle. His name was Adolfo but we called him, “Popo.” There was a bunch of people at Tio Popo’s house when Allen made landfall, including all of my cousins. I remember it being fun and not scary. Previous hurricanes were scarier because we stayed at home and the house would shake something fierce.

Probably the strangest memory I have is one time when I was sick with a fever as a child. My parents gave me Tylenol and whatever was in Tylenol back in the 1970’s made me have hallucinations. I was in my bed and could see giant spiders below my sister’s bed. My mom had me go to her bedroom because I was so freaked out. I spent a good amount of time watching what appeared to me to be a national geographic special on the African Sahara on the wall of their bedroom. After a while, I was staring out the window and could see dark figures walking outside the window. One of the figures stopped to peek through the window. That was it for me and the hallucinations. I shut my eyes as tight as I could and probably kept them shut until I finally fell asleep. The images of the spiders, African lions, and of the dark figure that I saw are forever etched in my brain.

I recall attending a wake for my great grandmother, mama grande, that was held in the living room of the home where she lived. I wasn’t much taller than the coffin, so I must have been three or four. I didn’t have an emotional reaction, but I recall that the room was dark as was the mood. I remember thinking, “How can someone lay still for so long?” About five years later, my grandmother, Olivia, died. Although my emotional reaction was initially about the same as it was for my great grandmother, during the burial I recall being overcome with grief and running to our car to cry. In retrospect, I must have learned that once the casket goes into the ground, you never see that person again. “Forever” is a scary concept at any age, but especially for a child.

My most intense childhood memory is the time in our lives when my parents separated and later divorced. I was in middle school at the time. My family attended church less frequently during this difficult period. After this, I didn’t regularly attend church (with a few minor exceptions) until 2000. Having lived a life with what I would call an extraordinary number of blessings, I felt for most of my life that I was not worthy of such blessings because of my lack of religious devotion. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t led a life based on principles such as love, respect, honor, and justice. My parents taught me well and served as a good example for how to be a good person.

We weren’t alone in having “just a little” when it came to money and possessions. When I was in high school, Starr County had the dubious distinction of being the second poorest county in the nation. I remember that my friends and I would joke that maybe the following year we would be number one instead of number two. We didn’t have much, but it wasn’t something I worried about as a kid. We didn’t have much, but neither did the vast majority of the people around us. Our normal, everyday life was just that to us—normal. It was only when I went off to college that I discovered that being poor wasn’t normal for most families, especially not families sending their kids to Stanford University.

I was always a good student. From Kindergarten to 12th grade, I only received two B’s in all of my report cards. If you check the records, I officially only had one B, because in 6th grade, I received a B in art. When my mom asked about it, I said that I didn’t think it was fair because I did all of the artwork required. Of course, being the good advocate that she was, she complained to someone at school about the grade and it was changed to an A. My other B came in 3rd grade. Part of my success in schools is that I was never absent. Having worked for the Austin school district for a little over nine years, I know now the importance of attendance. From Kindergarten to 12th grade, I only missed 2 days (if you don’t count extracurricular trips). The first day that I missed was in 3rd grade, and as luck would have it, I missed the day I was supposed to receive my perfect attendance certificate. The 2nd day that I missed was during my senior year. I actually skipped school with my girlfriend just to see what it felt like to skip school. Even though my mom worked at the high school athletics office, she never found out that I skipped. (Until now. Sorry, mom!)

I graduated salutatorian of my class. I say this not to toot my own horn, but to highlight a lesson I learned from being number two and not number one. For my entire high school tenure, I was the top ranked student in my graduating class. There was no doubt that I would be valedictorian, until the topped ranked student in the Junior class decided to graduate early. Her GPA was less than 2 tenths of a point higher than mine (on a 100 point scale), but I maintained it for 4 years and she only maintained it for 3 years. I was a rule-follower, so I didn’t challenge it. By the time that the rankings were announced, I had already been accepted to Stanford, so I didn’t really give a flip. But, I do wish I would have challenged the ranking, just out of principle.

Maybe this doesn’t fit in with stories about how true rockers start. I followed the rules, didn’t miss school, and got good grades. But I always just wanted to be left alone. Getting good grades kept my mom and my teachers off my back, so I got what I wanted. I wasn’t a childhood genius by any means. In 3rd grade, I got my first B, and 4th grade did not get off to a good start. I was having serious problems with reading comprehension, but I was able to get one-on-one tutoring through the school district’s migrant program, a program that provided academic support to students of migrant farm workers. My family would migrate to New Mexico during the summers because my dad would go to work in the produce packing/shipping plants. My father’s migrant work allowed me to qualify for tutoring, and this is what helped me to develop a love for learning. Although reading doesn’t come easy to me to this day, I love learning, and I am happy in life as long as I can continue to learn and use the knowledge gained for the greater good.

I mention this particular academic intervention because it points to the fact that I have a different way of learning and thinking. Although I had great difficulty with comprehension, through the individualized support I received, I was able to learn how to increase my reading comprehension and get my homework done more efficiently. Without this help, I am not sure I would have remained a straight A student, enjoyed the same kind of academic success in middle school and high school, or ended up at Stanford.

I believe that in dealing with my differences in learning abilities, I developed stronger abilities in the areas of analysis and perception as a result. My limitation became an advantage. Because I had to pay a greater amount of attention in order to comprehend what was being taught, I noticed more than other students might have. Because I had to read things two or three times over, I began noticing patterns that other people might not typically notice. Out of necessity, I became an effective problem solver. I believe that my problem solving skills have allowed me to be effective in my political and professional careers as well as with my community advocacy efforts.