Most memorable was the day before the mass, at confession. - Rigoberto González

In high school the approaching graduation was stirring up excitement among the seniors. I didn't care much for any of it since I couldn't afford any of the mementoes or activities offered for completing the four years. I had not attended the prom or the senior trip, had not purchased a class ring or letterman's jacket or the yearbook—had not even taken my senior portrait—and I wasn't about to attend the ceremony we had been rehearsing all week.

My four years of high school were spent locked up inside “el campo.” I became a voracious reader and television-watcher, keeping to myself at such alarming extremes that I became invisible. My invisibility provided the perfect protection against harm of any sort. I walked to and from school past the gangsters as silently as a breeze, so disassociated from their tattoos and lingo that even they couldn't find a place for me in their lines of vision.

I know what he means: the taste of language that is only spoken and never written because the speaker most likely doesn't read or write. My father has it, too.