Isolation Have you ever felt isolated from your surroundings, either because of language or culture wise, being new in town, feeling friendless, or simply because you have to study while everyone else is out having fun while you study? Well I have had many experiences like those. There was a time in which I had moved from New Jersey to Tennessee and I was the new kid on the block. Also there was another addition in my life back when in my childhood years when I had first started school as kindergartener.

Well it was a chilly early morning with bright blue skies in early September. The birds were out and singing with a smooth and majestic melody. I was only four or five and about 3’5 with a fresh new haircut. I remember I was a nervous wreck with a sad look on my face for the simple fact that it was my first day in a room filled with strangers. As the minutes would pass by waiting in the humid office with my parents on some paper work that needed to be done I would constantly have that thought in the back of my head on how thing would be in that new room that I was destine to go. Then came that dreadful sentence that I didn’t want to hear, “Well everything here is done. Carlos is now able to go to his new room.” Walking down the hallway to the room it seems like the hallway would expand and we were walking forever. To my surprise I turn my head in a sad manner to be surprised that we have not moved that far from the office. The time was here when we finally arrived to what I call my sudden death. The teachers had come out to greet both my parents and her new student. They soon started to chatter upon on what I would be doing in their class and what I was expected to learn from now to the end of the year. As they would talk I would occasionally look into the brightly shinned white room and would see some children coloring and playing around with the Crayola’s. But as soon as I can remember I had dazed off into the classroom for so long that my soon to be teachers and my parents were ending their conversation that also meant it was time for them to leave. As I cherished their last warm bear hug and a kiss on the forehead from their cold dry lips, I would soon notice my eyes were getting watery. I would watch them walk away as I would go into the room.

The other occasion when I felt isolated was when I had moved from my hometown in New Jersey to a new town in Tennessee. I was the new kid on the block as well as in school. I recall it being a lukewarm mourning with no car in sight and not a single movement throughout the neighborhood. As I waited for the bus to arrive I started to see people arriving at the bus stop from each and every side. That’s when the isolation began mostly because I was never the social type nor an excellent friend maker. Then like a couple minutes passed by and in the far end of the block I saw a bright yellow, Hostess Twinkie, looking bus. It made a stop right in front of me and I boarded the bus I made sure I would sit on the two-seaters that way I can put ma book bag so no one would sit there. As the last person got on the bus started to move on forward to the school. This was when the nervous feeling came to play and only way I could block it was by looking out the window. I would sit and stare at what seemed like a portrait of a landscape as we headed up a hill. I yet again dazed off for so long that we was already arriving in school. As I walked the hallways I would get stared at not knowing if that was good or bad because there was no Hispanic insight.