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Tales of an Insomniac: Busted Head

~~This is another story written in a fictional state of mind. The situations in this story is inspired by true events but are not at all true.~~

On July 21st of 2012, I spent the majority of the day with a bunch of Muslim brothers and sisters enjoying a gigantic Iftar that we all gathered together to enjoy. There was tons of food and tons of good people, and I was essentially happy to be there. Unfortunately I had to leave right after breaking the fast since I had to work immediately after. Everyone begged me not to go and I nearly called out, but I ended up leaving because I needed to make that night’s pay check.

I arrived to work late since I had to park what seemed like a thousand miles away from my job and I was put on a spot that I have been put on for the last five days. The night was dead, as there was hardly any customers coming as every other day. I was contemplating on going to my supervisor and asking him for an early out when someone told me there is a fight going on right around the corner. Myself and another security guard ran over to see a fight sure enough happening between a large group of Mexicans. We successfully split the group up and walked everyone out, hoping that the situation was taken care of.

Unfortunately it wasn’t, as when it came time for me to go down to my second post which was at the main exit of my work, I saw one of the groups that were involved in the fight from before standing right in front of me. They looked drunk and pissed off. I had a big feeling that these guys were up to no good, but I had to quell it off because someone of higher power than me let them in again. Perhaps one of our guys made a decent tip-off them and let them hang out. Either way, this was a shitty situation, because I did not like these guys at all.

A short while later a girl who was hanging out in the group came up to me and said “Hey, so I think someone is purposefully spilling their drinks all over us over there”, and I looked over to see one of the Mexican guys, a giant six-foot-four behemoth of a man, absolutely destroying some random person. This guy was throwing his right hand down as if it were Thor’s hammer, and no one was doing anything to stop him. I quickly ran over to him and threw him off the poor guy. To my surprise the big guy wasn’t strong at all, and thankfully he was in terrible shape. I was able to quickly apprehend him and start leading him towards the main exit, when out of nowhere one of his buddies reached over both of us and smacked me on the head with the butt of a beer bottle.

From what I hear, I lost consciousness for a few seconds. When I regained myself I was back in the midst of things, kicking people out left and right, and I was very happy to see my coworkers restraining the guy that smacked my head with a bottle.

After about two minutes of this big fight, I ran down to the employee bathroom to see how bad the cut was.

And let me tell you, that thing was nasty. It looked like some took a small axe and dug it into my face. The blood from my face was running like the faucet I was using to clean myself, and I found it ironic that the water would just be the color red instead of the clear liquid that I so thoroughly needed.

One of my coworkers came into the bathroom and ordered me to sit down on a far chair so he can perform first aid on me. Thankfully he put a sufficient amount of antibiotics and gauze on my injury, as the blood was able to come to a control and I didn’t need to worry about it flowing out anymore. I found out later that the guy who struck me with a beer bottle was sitting in the same room with handcuffs on him, and I heard him say “Hey bro, I’ll let you hit me back so you guys won’t send me to jail!”

I got pissed. “You hit me in the face with a beer bottle and you’re begging me for forgiveness? You’re nothing but a worthless idiot, society’s worst creation! Grow the hell up and admit to your damn faults!”

The guy tried to argue with me but I left him alone. Shortly after the police came to take a report from me and I told them I do want to press charges, so the guy went to jail for assault with a deadly weapon. One of my coworkers drove me to the hospital nearby shortly after for a check up on my laceration. We had to wait in the waiting room for an hour and a half, and during this wait we had an encounter with a racist white male who called both of us “sand people” (both my coworker and I are from the East), and a woman named Stacey who kept offering me “candy”.

Once we got into our bed, we had to wait for what seemed like another three hours to finish the cat scan and to wait for the plastic surgeon to arrive from his beauty sleep. We were in the hospital until about six in the morning, and thankfully the plastic surgeon was able to fix up the mess quickly and prescribed me some good medication to take care of the damage.

My coworker and I went to eat breakfast shortly after, talking about how crazy the night was and how my first month of San Diego has pretty much been the craziest month of my life. It’s like almost every day I literally get beaten up by something, whether it be some kind of sickness, illness, or some kind of city mandated law. Every day in San Diego I always find myself in the short end of the stick. I tell him that this life probably isn’t for me and that I shouldn’t be living in San Diego in the first place, but I have no where else to go and I want to succeed in what I want to do. I tell him how I have learned to be thankful for the fact that I am given these kind of stories and given this kind of life versus sitting around and pretty much not doing anything with the life I am in.

After a few more minutes of talking, we head back to my place to take a quick nap, and then I had to head back to downtown to pick up my car. On the way home I thought about how I have found myself in front of doctors more times than I did back home in Vegas, how my fast during Ramadan is essentially ruined now because I decided to head down to some crappy place to work, and how am I supposed to recover from this and make myself stronger than before. I came to the conclusion that every day, I am beat down here in San Diego, as if the entire city doesn’t want me at all, but I know if I keep standing up and swinging back, the city itself will learn to respect me. For now I just have to learn the better steps to get my punches in.

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Mary Catherine Swanson wants every San Diego student going to college

Where busing from Southeast San Diego to University City has led

~~This is another story written in a fictional state of mind. The situations in this story is inspired by true events but are not at all true.~~

On July 21st of 2012, I spent the majority of the day with a bunch of Muslim brothers and sisters enjoying a gigantic Iftar that we all gathered together to enjoy. There was tons of food and tons of good people, and I was essentially happy to be there. Unfortunately I had to leave right after breaking the fast since I had to work immediately after. Everyone begged me not to go and I nearly called out, but I ended up leaving because I needed to make that night’s pay check.

I arrived to work late since I had to park what seemed like a thousand miles away from my job and I was put on a spot that I have been put on for the last five days. The night was dead, as there was hardly any customers coming as every other day. I was contemplating on going to my supervisor and asking him for an early out when someone told me there is a fight going on right around the corner. Myself and another security guard ran over to see a fight sure enough happening between a large group of Mexicans. We successfully split the group up and walked everyone out, hoping that the situation was taken care of.

Unfortunately it wasn’t, as when it came time for me to go down to my second post which was at the main exit of my work, I saw one of the groups that were involved in the fight from before standing right in front of me. They looked drunk and pissed off. I had a big feeling that these guys were up to no good, but I had to quell it off because someone of higher power than me let them in again. Perhaps one of our guys made a decent tip-off them and let them hang out. Either way, this was a shitty situation, because I did not like these guys at all.

A short while later a girl who was hanging out in the group came up to me and said “Hey, so I think someone is purposefully spilling their drinks all over us over there”, and I looked over to see one of the Mexican guys, a giant six-foot-four behemoth of a man, absolutely destroying some random person. This guy was throwing his right hand down as if it were Thor’s hammer, and no one was doing anything to stop him. I quickly ran over to him and threw him off the poor guy. To my surprise the big guy wasn’t strong at all, and thankfully he was in terrible shape. I was able to quickly apprehend him and start leading him towards the main exit, when out of nowhere one of his buddies reached over both of us and smacked me on the head with the butt of a beer bottle.

From what I hear, I lost consciousness for a few seconds. When I regained myself I was back in the midst of things, kicking people out left and right, and I was very happy to see my coworkers restraining the guy that smacked my head with a bottle.

After about two minutes of this big fight, I ran down to the employee bathroom to see how bad the cut was.

And let me tell you, that thing was nasty. It looked like some took a small axe and dug it into my face. The blood from my face was running like the faucet I was using to clean myself, and I found it ironic that the water would just be the color red instead of the clear liquid that I so thoroughly needed.

One of my coworkers came into the bathroom and ordered me to sit down on a far chair so he can perform first aid on me. Thankfully he put a sufficient amount of antibiotics and gauze on my injury, as the blood was able to come to a control and I didn’t need to worry about it flowing out anymore. I found out later that the guy who struck me with a beer bottle was sitting in the same room with handcuffs on him, and I heard him say “Hey bro, I’ll let you hit me back so you guys won’t send me to jail!”

I got pissed. “You hit me in the face with a beer bottle and you’re begging me for forgiveness? You’re nothing but a worthless idiot, society’s worst creation! Grow the hell up and admit to your damn faults!”

The guy tried to argue with me but I left him alone. Shortly after the police came to take a report from me and I told them I do want to press charges, so the guy went to jail for assault with a deadly weapon. One of my coworkers drove me to the hospital nearby shortly after for a check up on my laceration. We had to wait in the waiting room for an hour and a half, and during this wait we had an encounter with a racist white male who called both of us “sand people” (both my coworker and I are from the East), and a woman named Stacey who kept offering me “candy”.

Once we got into our bed, we had to wait for what seemed like another three hours to finish the cat scan and to wait for the plastic surgeon to arrive from his beauty sleep. We were in the hospital until about six in the morning, and thankfully the plastic surgeon was able to fix up the mess quickly and prescribed me some good medication to take care of the damage.

My coworker and I went to eat breakfast shortly after, talking about how crazy the night was and how my first month of San Diego has pretty much been the craziest month of my life. It’s like almost every day I literally get beaten up by something, whether it be some kind of sickness, illness, or some kind of city mandated law. Every day in San Diego I always find myself in the short end of the stick. I tell him that this life probably isn’t for me and that I shouldn’t be living in San Diego in the first place, but I have no where else to go and I want to succeed in what I want to do. I tell him how I have learned to be thankful for the fact that I am given these kind of stories and given this kind of life versus sitting around and pretty much not doing anything with the life I am in.

After a few more minutes of talking, we head back to my place to take a quick nap, and then I had to head back to downtown to pick up my car. On the way home I thought about how I have found myself in front of doctors more times than I did back home in Vegas, how my fast during Ramadan is essentially ruined now because I decided to head down to some crappy place to work, and how am I supposed to recover from this and make myself stronger than before. I came to the conclusion that every day, I am beat down here in San Diego, as if the entire city doesn’t want me at all, but I know if I keep standing up and swinging back, the city itself will learn to respect me. For now I just have to learn the better steps to get my punches in.

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