The Freedom Writers Diary - Erin Gruwell [14]
I ended up playing Rufus because Ms. Gruwell thought that Rufus and I have a lot of the similarities. Even though my friend pretended he wasn’t upset, I knew something was wrong. The next day I asked him why he really wanted to play Rufus. At first he was hesitant to answer. We walked in silence for a while before he told me about the first time he met his father. He was only four years old. His father walked toward him wearing an orange jumpsuit with his prisoner number across the chest. Behind him, he dragged the burden of heavy shackles. They didn’t even have a chance to speak; the police took him away.
I felt sorry for him. I knew how hard it was to grow up without a father. Finally, I understood his need to play Rufus. He wanted to express his pain through this character. Ironically, Ms. Gruwell chose him to play Rufus’s probation officer.
Not only did this movie give us a better understanding of Durango Street, we also learned a lot about one another. We began to understand the true meaning of not judging a book by its cover. When we showed our movie to other English classes, lots of the students who had made fun of us for being in a remedial English class began asking how they could get into the class.
After we made our movie, Ms. Gruwell took us to see Hoop Dreams. It’s a documentary about two boys from the Chicago projects who had a passion for basketball. The characters were a lot like the characters in the book—but more important, they were a lot like us. Like Rufus, most people didn’t expect them to do well. They proved everyone wrong. I guess it just goes to show that if your passion is deep enough, you can do anything.
Diary 14
Dear Diary,
We started reading a short story in my English class called “The Last Spin.” This story is a trip. I’ve never read something in school that related to something that happened in my life. In the story, the main characters, Tigo and Dave, were rival gang members. One of the gangs shot up a candy store in the other gang’s territory. Instead of having a war in the city, the gang leaders decided that Tigo and Dave were going to settle it one on one.
Tigo and Dave settled the war by playing a game of Russian roulette. As they were playing they began to talk, and they realized they had many things in common and that playing Russian roulette to settle a beef between their gangs was stupid. They decided to take their last turn and end the game because neither one of them wanted to die. Dave took his last turn and then he passed the gun to Tigo. What was supposed to be the end of the game ended up being the last game of Tigo’s life. The fact that Tigo died because of a senseless act reminded me of the way a guy in my neighborhood had died.
Four guys from my neighborhood were chilling in the living room of an apartment; one of the guys had just bought a gun off the streets. Two of the younger guys had never touched a gun before but wanted to see it anyway. The owner of the gun took the clip out and handed the gun to them. Unfortunately, he forgot that he had cocked the gun back and he didn’t check to see if there was a bullet lodged in the chamber.
One of the guys who had never seen a gun before grabbed it. He and the other guy started to fight for the gun. The gun accidentally went off and hit one of them in the forehead. He died instantly. Everyone started to panic. One of the guys picked up the gun and cleaned off all the fingerprints. He then made sure that the fingerprints of the dead boy were all over the gun. They left the room without touching anything.
When the police arrived, they found a dead body, a puddle of blood, and the gun. There were no witnesses, so they called it a suicide. The boy’s parents didn’t believe their son would commit suicide; they didn’t believe the story the police had told them. They knew their son wouldn’t