First time in juvie

My whole life had been leading up to this. As far back as I could remember, my brother and I had talked of becoming bad men and what we would do when we eventually landed behind bars. Looking back, I can’t even remember what I was arrested for in the first place.

While nearly all of the local police knew me by first name, most of them referred to me as “Mr. Tuleja” whenever addressing me in public. I never understood why.

“Well, Mr. Tuleja, I’m afraid your parents have decided not to come get you. In fact, they asked that you be taken down to the juvenile hall.” The officer yelled to me from down the hall as I sat, still handcuffed in the holding cell. “Looks like you and I will be taking a ride to Downey!”

After a couple hours of paperwork, fingerprinting, driving, more paperwork and more fingerprinting, I was finally processed into Los Padrinos Juvenile hall. Sitting inside a cell, waiting to be moved to my unit, I was afforded a few more hours with my thoughts. Scared and uncertain, I began formulating my plan. As a small white kid, I was surely going to be targeted by some of the bigger guys as someone to screw with, which made my first action obvious. I had to do something that would make it very clear that I was not someone who should be bothered, and that, as everyone knew, was to beat the hell out of the biggest guy in the room. Well now, I understood the logic here, but what could I do to really stand out?

The sound of jingling keys interrupted my thoughts, as a guard opened my cell and mad a sad attempt at pronouncing my last name. “toolee….um…tulayha??”

I stood without saying a word, learning years earlier that trying to teach people to pronounce my last name was an exercise in frustration.
“Hmm….this should be interesting! Says here, you gonna play with the big boys!”
Not sure how to take this, I continued my silence as I followed him down through a labyrinth of hallways to an outdoor courtyard where several buildings were lined up in a row. Walking to the farthest one, we entered and I immediately saw what he meant by “big boys”. Every guy in here was much larger and obviously older than I was. This was going to suck.

We had arrived at lunchtime when everyone was in the dining hall which was one of the few occasions where everyone was out of their cell at the same time. Looking around the room, I quickly identified the biggest dude in the room and began to smile. Much larger than any other person in the room, he would help me make a nasty reputation for myself quickly. As I began running toward him I realized that attacking the biggest, baddest guy in the hall would make me a tough guy, but attacking this guard would make me a legend.