My earliest memory is playing in an old refrigerator with my foster brother Albert. I was placed in foster care at the age of 2 you see, and ended up growing up in 30 some homes and institutions. I kept running away, and at the age of 16, was certified to the adult Court, having ran away over 100 times. I was labeled an incorrigible criminal and sentenced to 4 years in a State penitentiary when I was 16. The charge was burglary, however the other sixteen-year-old I was with had a key and told me he live there. Turns out he had lived there, but had been kicked out by his foster parents and he had kept a key. So while I was downstairs sitting on the sofa, he was upstairs robbing the place. Turns out his old Foster father was very close friends to the judge that sentenced me. At the certification hearing the judge asked if there was anybody there to speak on my behalf, (of course, knowing I had nobody there) so I stood up and tried to explain that I really wasn’t that bad of a boy. List of course fell on the judge’s dead ears.
I served three years and learned a lot about how to be a good criminal. I learned how to pick locks, wheel and deal, fight in the shower, and did Coke for the first time and with a needle at that. Even though I was labeled, and sentenced as an incorrigible criminal, I characteristically refused to own the labels of society.