Quote:
Originally Posted by fintstone
I started walking the 8 blocks to school and home with my 9 months older brother in the first grade (I was five and he was six). I saw where a woman was arrested for letting her 8-year-old do this. Seems like a different world. My mother dropped me off downtown at 6AM in the nearest city (on her way to work) about once a week in the summer I was 10 or 11 and spent the day and then she picked me up on the way home at around 5PM on her way home. I had a dime for a pay phone if there was an emergency, but never wasted it. I waited outside for the public library to open, read all day, checked out books and met her at my drop off point. As I child, I worked with my father (hard labor) and had very specific responsibilities...where if I failed, we did not eat/have a warm place to live. I left home at 17 with nothing and built a life for myself (and my soon to be family). Big responsibility (and opportunity for failure) builds character. Whining/losing is never an option.
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I remember looking at my checking account check register and seeing single digits in my account after moving to a new city 900 miles from mom and dad. The physical move, paying for the apartment deposit, first and last month rent, setting up utilities with no credit history in the state, so lots of utility deposits, and trying to buy some food for the empty fridge was expensive. I ate a lot of rice, beans, and potatoes. Friday night payday meant I got to pour a can of soup over the rice and splurge. And I was starting at 12 grand per year salary, so no big paychecks for a while. I had no friends in a strange city, and all the employees at work were married and did not want to hang with the single guy. No GPS in those days, so to get somewhere I had to use an analog map and map out my route before leaving the apartment.
Somehow I survived, met many wonderful friends, and built a great life in this city.