Flying Lessons & Other Stories

Content Warning: The source material features depictions of racism and racial profiling.

Told from the second-person point of view, this story begins with the unnamed narrator, a Mexican American teenager, expressing his love for basketball. For the past three years, he has spent all his free time on the outdoor courts near his house. When he overhears others talking about the best pickup basketball in the city at Muni Gym, he decides that he needs to go there. After looking up the gym’s location and seeing that it’s a walkable distance from the factory where his father works, the narrator implores his father to take him along to the factory in the mornings so he can make his way to the gym from there. At first, his father does not say a word, but then he tells his son to be ready by 5am or the car will leave without him.

On the morning rides, the two rarely speak, and only the radio fills the silence, indicating that there is tension between father and son. Once they arrive at the factory and his father goes to work, the narrator finds a way to sleep in the small Volkswagen until his alarm goes off, and then he begins the journey to Muni Gym.