Bad notes

Author: Mark Somers
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: I told the students in my writing class that I had the habit of taking notes when I encountered difficulties. However, even after writing down the insights I gained from self-reflection, it didn’t always lead to me putting them into practice—I would still repeat the mistakes about half the time afterward. Therefore, I felt that personal willpower was easily swayed by external forces. But I still needed this kind of thinking activity, so I continued to take notes. In the end, I still agreed to visit the Central Juvenile Training Institute.
The address was easy to find. I took off from the East Los Angeles interchange and drove toward the county hospital, then followed the chain-link fence straight ahead until I arrived. I parked in front of a dilapidated guard station, and there was a sign at the entrance requiring all visitors to show identification. However, there wasn’t a single guard in sight nearby, so I drove further into the parking lot and parked next to a dark-tinted car. A sticker on the car’s bumper read: “My son beat up your model student!”
While waiting for Duane at the entrance, a police car passed by me and stopped in front of a concrete wall with two metal gates, each eighteen feet high. A teenager was sitting in the back seat of the police car, his hands cuffed behind his back, looking bored. The red lights on the metal gates began to flash, and the siren wailed as the gates swung open like a gaping mouth, accompanied by a sharp noise. After the police car entered the building, the gates closed behind it.
When the appointed time arrived, I saw Duane walking over from the other end of the parking lot, a backpack slung over his shoulder. When we shook hands, the siren went off again. The police car that had just arrived had already left through the gates, but the teenager inside was gone. I guessed he would be properly disciplined within the institute before being sent to an adult prison or thrown out onto the streets.
“Isn’t this place special?” Duane said. He led me to a corrugated aluminum-sided prefabricated building and exchanged his driver’s license with someone inside for a key. Using it, we opened an old, rusted iron gate and entered a narrow alley. Duane explained that this was just a temporary entrance—the original one had been damaged by an earthquake and was still under repair. But the earthquake he was referring to had happened more than three years ago.
We walked down the alley, one side lined with smoke-stained walls, the other side occupied by an abandoned building. Through a broken window, I peered inside and saw iron bed frames scattered haphazardly on the ground, covered in thick layers of dust. At the end of the alley was an overgrown entrance leading to a courtyard that spanned several acres, surrounded by concrete bunkers.
I had already prepared myself for the fact that the institute wouldn’t be a pleasant place, but it looked downright terrifying, like a scene from a Dickens novel. This impression was soon confirmed after the visit—Los Angeles County later ordered an investigation of all juvenile training institutes in the county to assess their medical facilities, educational programs, the mental health of the trainees, and living conditions. The Central Training Institute was rated as “already in a state of disintegration.”
Although the place looked like a ruin, I noticed some shadows moving around the perimeter. Tracking them down, I realized they were wild cats—