“Dad snapped his fingers. ‘These folks zigged when the rest of the world zagged. And once you cross that line, there’s no coming back. Mark my words.’” 

Gantos recalls his father saying this to him when Gantos is a child; the pair would drive through town, and his father would point out the men and women that made bad decisions, decisions that irrevocably changed them from regular people to criminals. This echoes in Gantos’ mind: there is a point of no return, when a person allows themselves to be defined by their bad decisions, and then their life is defined by criminality.

“Someone once said anyone can be great under rosy circumstances, but the true test of character is measured by how well a person makes decisions during difficult times.” 

This signifies a sense of foreboding in the story; it alludes to Gantos’ mistakes as a young man, first in Puerto Rico, then Ft. Lauderdale, and then his fateful decision to engage in drug smuggling in St. Croix. His decisions foreshadow the many “zigs” (as his father would call them) that Gantos makes. It also foreshadows his resilience once arrested. Prison tests Gantos in many ways, but he manages to redeem himself in the darkest months of his life.

“I’d go to the casinos at the El San Juan and Americana. I’d imagine I was James Bond meeting beautiful older women at the roulette tables and walking arm in arm up to their rooms where something dangerously exotic might happen. But the only arm I managed to warm up was on the slot machines.” 

Throughout his youth, Gantos is obsessed with adventure. He is also obsessed with posturing himself after great writers or fictional characters he deems courageous or sexy. In his many efforts to be more interesting, he actually finds himself sinking deeper into a mindset of shirking accountability, which will be his undoing.