Tokens to survive

I remember a big guy named Steve and a very nice girl named Vicki who worked at the institution. All the children had chores there and if you did it you would get a red token which was a plastic circle the size of a quarter. If your room was clean you got 3 tokens. If you made your bed you got 3 tokens, if you took a shower you got 4 tokens. You always had to make sure your room was clean and your bed was made. The purpose of the tokens was if you did everything you were supposed to, you would turn in your tokens to see a movie on campus, or go to the store in the van. You could also use them like money. They had a little store where you would buy everything; toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, shampoo, brush, and laundry detergent. If you were bad they would give you a toothbrush and make you clean the bathroom. We did our own laundry with slugs they would give us in the basement (mind you, I was probably about 6 year old when I was first placed here.)

When we were bad we would have to vacuum the long hallways, then go down on our hand and knees along the baseboards to clean the debris. We also had to clean the radiators.

They had a big cafeteria where we would all eat. If you would miss out they would say "the kitchen is closed" and you would have to wait, unless they had any leftovers. The food was good except for when they served liver or shredded beef with gravy over mashed potatoes!

TOUGH LIFESTYLE AT THE INSTITUTION

In the Gym, there was this one brat child that picked me up and threw me because we were teasing each other. I was stunned he would do that to me. Once you lived there a month you learned how to defend yourself. There was a lot of stealing going on. If you left anything in your corner of the room, people would take things from you. If someone took something from me, I would try to find out who it was and go and get it back.