Once upon a time ago, a small boy crawled (ahem, as in didn't swim) across the then chalk drawn border between Mexico and America, hoping to find within its great lands a place to call home. He longed for an end to the shrieking ignorance he heard spewn forth from the mouths of his brethren everyday on the streets of Matamoros; for clean soccer fields in which to play; for water that was tasty and drinkable. Arriving at last in America, he thought to himself

"Two out of three ain't bad.

Now, Texas is a marvelous place. Forests, mountains, islands, swamps, plains, desert scrubland, and all manner of other mana-producing environments can be found there. Yeh, even Brass Cities. However, Texas is not the most forward thinking or open-minded place in which to grow up, as I did. Little did I know.

Under the soft, warm and well-meaning guidance of my mother and friends, I pursued the teachings of God, Jesus Christ and The Holy Spirit. I learned many things as fact, though I know now that fact, fiction and opinion are separated only by faith, exacting experimentation, and the intentions of whomever is holding the pen.

Along with religion, I was indoctrinated into other American institutions. Some were picked up as a result of my surroundings, like language, culture and appropriate social understandings. Others were gleaned from the thousands of books I read as I grew. Books are expensive, but the Public Library, God Bless America, is free.

Being a child to the world and its varied ideologies, I stepped from the splendor of Fort Worth to one of America's bastions of liberal thought- Portland, Oregon. I wasn't prepared. You know that dream where you show up to school and are told that you have to give an hour long presentation about quantum physics, complete with pictures and graphs and the superconductor you were supposed to build, but you're all like "I don't even know what a quark is" (ten points to all those who know who Quark is), but they shove you up on stage anyway in front of everyone you've ever known, even that girl that you have a massive crush on but are tongue tied around perpetually, and then, adding insult to injury, you're somehow, all of a sudden, nekkid?...No? Oh...well...that's how unprepared I was for Reed College.