Bad Kids

Omar @ SE 20th & Burnside

It was Thursday evening and the bus stop at SE 20th & Burnside was packed full of rowdy teenagers, talking shit and shoving each other into the Trimet shelter's plastic partitions.  Omar stood apart from the fray, looking more than ready to go home.  I asked him what was up with all the high schoolers hanging out so late in the day.  Did basketball practice just let out or something?  "Nah," he pointed at a nondescript building across the street.  "That's my school.  We just got out of class."  Omar attends evening classes at L.E.P High, so that he can make up the missing credits that have kept him from graduating high school.  "Everybody thinks it's a school for bad kids, but its not," he told me, "I'm there because I had a lot of trouble at Madison [High] when I was there and dropped out".

Omar hopes to graduate this year and move to Colorado to pursue writing and rapping.  Like many kids, hip hop motivates him to improve his word game, comprehension, and poetic sensibility.  "I rap about life," he told me as we rode the bus downtown, citing Immortal Technique and Tupac Shakur (upon whose mention be peace) as his main influences.  Omar's not all about bling and grills and girls and guns, he wants to be an artist and communicate his presence in the world.  He perceives the world looking at him like a "bad kid", but he knows his own heart and wants the world to recognize him for who he is, not for who they assume him to be.