Personal Narrative: My Strict Russian Family

I grew up in a really strict Russian family that had a lot or rules and punishments, most of the punishments were negative. Our late dinner nights included lectures about drugs, sex and alcohol and how it was all forbidden in our culture. I was not allowed to bring boys home, having sleepovers with my girl friends, applying makeup on my face or even dying my hair until the age of 18. In 2011 two years after my arrival to Canada, I met my boyfriend and his group of friends, some of them were drug dealers, shoplifters, committing traffic rules violations and etc.
So on a hot summer day back in 2014, my boyfriend and I smoked a joint in his car next to the river shore. There was no one around so we did not think that by smoking a joint we would …show more content…
He asked to see our identities and then his partner took the joint out of my hand and trough it on the ground. While he was gone for the identity check, I took the 3 grams of weed from my boyfriend and hide it in my bag. The police officer arrested us and asked me to open my bag and he claimed that carrying 3 grams of marijuana considered as a serious criminal norm violation so they laid charges. Eventually we received a letter saying that we must go to court. Our lawyer was really helpful and argued that carrying 3 grams of weed would not be considered as a serious criminal norm violation but a minor violation and that our sanction should not be harsh. Therefore, the judge decided that we committed a primary act of deviance and that our …show more content…
When my family and I arrived to Canada we noticed that the consummation of cannabis was very popular. Most of my classmates, my father’s and mother’s coworkers consume the drug. My father still cannot accept the fact that marijuana could be legal in Canada and being very ethnocentric. The cultural shock influenced me to meet different groups of people that were completely different from my culture. I learned to be a deviant from the people I was friend with. Therefore, the theory of different association was a big part of my deviant behaviour in the case of summer 2014. My criminal behaviour was learned from my boyfriend and his friends. I spent most of my time with them and some of them went to my high school. We were so close that we believed we created a “family”. I had an excess to ideas that were favourable to violation of the law, from cannabis-cocaine drug deals to assisting an act of bullying. It created a moral confusion for my part because I was exposed to this group of people when I was 16 years old and saw them on daily biases. Therefore, I had a large disagreement with the values of my culture and the norms of my household. As matter of fact, labelling theory is very important in my case. I committed a primary act of deviance and I did not cause harm to anyone, yet the policy implication were harsh. The police still laid serious charges, arrested me and sent me to court. In fact, they did not