I MUST SAVE ESPERANZA!!

                                        So after that last visit to the Tijeras de Oro - I know Esperanza is in some kind of trouble - I just don’t know exactly what. But I gotta do something.  I mean, I just can’t stand by and do nothing, right? I gotta get a job - I need money. Money is POWER. It’s the only way I can help, and the only way she is gonna take me seriously; not think I’m just some dorky kid or something. With that, I go on a massive job search all over Roselle!

     After a week of rejection and frustration though, I am ready to do the unthinkable. I really don’t want to go to Jack’s Barber Shop, to ask for a job. I mean, I’d been going there on Saturdays once a month with my father for like the last four years- and every time - he gives me the exact same Wild Root haircut! The same one he gives the corny Holden brothers. The same one he gives EVERYONE!

“Look at that, Joey! You could be in the movie pictures, you could be the next Cary Grant,” he'd say, as he held up a mirror to the back of your head.

Lastly, he’d always give you a piece of Bazooka Gum and say – 

       “See ya in the funny papers.”

And he and my father would always laugh. What was that supposed to mean anyway? See ya in the funny papers? Why would anybody laugh at that?! Especially, after Jack had repeated it like sixty-seven times already? I’m sure neither of them think it’s really even funny. But it’s, like, they feel they have to laugh. Like they’re supposed to laugh. It’s a fake laugh, too, because they don’t know what else to do.

Embarrassing.