you have a good section in here you learned just an awesome lesson from your dad you say this as i grew older i would this is that this is now you’re working you’re working in the fields as i grew older i would learn the manas or bad habits of the other workers this included bending the bottom of their metal buckets inward to create less volume and thus appear to fill each bucket even more quickly that’s for the cucumbers i would also learn how to swiftly reseat a bucket of papinos to make it look more full when it was really not all tricks of the trade i told myself this was how we hernandez kids spent our weekends and summers we knew that it was our responsibility to do and there was no way of getting around that every morning spent in the fields promised us the same routine of going to and fro picking fruits or vegetables from the ground as the rays of the hot sun hit our backs during one saturday in particular i fell over accidentally stepping on a yellow overgrown pepino that was rotten i remember its rotten stench as i threw down my bucket standing there thinking i’m all covered in mud i stink i’m tired and i’m sunburned my siblings continue working alongside my parents but i’m not going to anymore i want to go home watch tv and play i decided to quit i went to my father and pulled on his pant leg to tell him dad i’m tired i want to go home when he heard when i told him he leaned down took hold of both my shoulders and with a surprised look on his face asked what’s wrong did something happen are you okay look at me i’m dirty i fell in the mud i want to leave plus i’ve already made 10 for the day i cried to him the day’s almost over he said just keep on working i don’t want to fine he said take a good look at yourself you don’t want to see you don’t like what you see right now you don’t like working in the fields in the hot sun or getting dirty am i right well if you quit now you’ll be creating a pattern that is easy to conform to if you don’t work hard in school or in life this will be your future is that what you want no i answered him well then don’t settle for ten dollars the day is almost over get back to work he ordered with just the right balance of authority and love and his version of tough love well my father told me that day in the fields changed the trajectory of my life it turned into the speech that transcended the end of a long day of working in the fields we would hear it when all four of us sat in the backseat of our ramshackle car father would turn around to look at us before he would turn on the engine and he would say so how do you guys feel right now we of course tired sweaty covered with mud and we would answer accordingly good he would say because you kids have the privilege of living your future right now living our future right now we would ask curiously yes he would say i’m not going to force you to go to school or get good grades but if you don’t this is the type of job you’ll have for the rest of your life this is the future that awaits you so if you want to quit school right now no problem i invite you to start coming to work with me every day as of tomorrow my father’s words made me realize that if i continued going to school i could do whatever it was i wanted to do in life if i studied hard i might one day make enough money so my parents would no longer have to work in the fields to this day i believe my father’s words changed the course of my destiny and i am so grateful to him for that i sometimes talk about the fact that i think one of the hardest things for kids to do is connect what they’re doing right now to their future they don’t understand that is that how hard they work right now is gonna going to put them wherever they end up in the future and your dad made that connection loud and clear for you all didn’t it exactly and he put it very well in saying you have the privilege because he said you know your neighbors you know aren’t working in the fields during the summer they’re off goofing off and having fun your friends they’re in the neighborhood they’re not doing that but you are so see they don’t know what their future is like so they’re happy go lucky carefree and they don’t care literally squad about going to school but you know what your future’s at here it is you’re living it you want to do this the rest of your life and i said man i don’t want to do this i think i’m gonna i’m gonna do well in school because i want something better than this and so so it was a hard lesson
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