The first time I went to Puerto Rico, I must've been nine or ten
years old. And we also lived there for like almost a year. And,
you know, one of the things that I liked about it was that--as a child was that we had uniforms. So having uniforms meant that
we all blended in. So even though there were kids from the town
itself and kids from the rural part of the town, where in most
instances there weren't paved roads and some of the kids went
around barefoot, everybody had a uniform. So nobody knew where
people were coming from economically. And I remember I enjoyed
that because when I came back to New York City to go to junior high
school, it was the opposite. And all of those kids were fascists--fashion conscious and, you know, we didn't have the money to buy
all the latest clothing. And you were kind of like trying to keep
up with the other classmates. And I remember thinking: Man, you
know, I really enjoyed having a uniform 'cause all you had to do
was wake up in the morning and put the uniform on when you rolled
out of bed and go out of the house. And when I came back to New
York, you know, the only thing kids cared about were leather coats
and suede shoes and sharkskin pants and I should have been paying
attention to the schoolwork but I was caught up in that also. But
that's one of the things I remember about Pueto Rico as a child--the uniforms
