Passage Three
Imagine that someone in your neighborhood broke the law, and the judge put the whole neighborhood under suspicion.
How fair will that be?
Well, it happens everyday to high schoolers.
Just because some students have stolen things in shops, all of us are treated like thieves.
Even though I’d never steal.
Store employees looked at me like I’m some kind of hardened criminal.
For example, during one lunch period, my friend Denny and I went to the Graben Gore Restaurant to have a hot dog.
We arrived to find a line of students waiting outside.
A new sign in the window told the story.
"No more than two students at a time".
After 15 minutes, we finally got in.
But the store manger laid the evil eye on us.
I asked him about the new sign, and he said,
"You kids are stealing too much stuff."
You kids? Too much stuff?
We were not only assumed to be thieves, but brilliant, greedy thieves.
The most annoying thing though, is the way employees watched my friends and me.
It’s horrible.
Once, at a drug store, I was looking around and found a guy standing on a large box, stocking the shelves.
He was watching my hands, more than he was watching his own.
I showed him that my hands were empty.
He got down off his box and rushed off, as if he was going to get the store manger.
How crazy is that!