Living In The Right Neighborhood Doesn’t Matter, what’s Inside the Home Does. Human character defines who you are, where you live doesn’t. Why is it so important to live in the right neighborhood? At least others think it is. Where we live usually tells people if we’re working class, middle class, or upper class. It gives the idea that our parents have money or are just getting by. I never viewed where I lived as the wrong neighborhood until one day some kid from high school noticed me walking home in a different direction than he thought I should be. For that brief moment, I was bewildered. Then I thought, why does he care?
In the neighborhood I lived in, the houses were small, not as small as the ones down the street, working-class residences. They were three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The backyard was large because the house was on the corner of a dead-end. This is an element I liked because there was plenty of space I could run around being a kid and there was a large tree to build a clubhouse.
As I grew into my teens I soon realized no matter what my mother said or did, she couldn’t get my father to budge and buy a larger home, knowing we needed it and he was able to afford it. With five kids in the family, we needed the space. I guess the only good thing was, we girls moved out quickly after high school.
Kids don’t realize their parent’s income until their friends start pointing it out because of where they live. It might be part of the reason I never wanted friends sleeping over, or coming over at all. The neighborhood a person lives in indicates how affluent the family is and if you come from money. The reality is, living in a really nice big house doesn’t mean anything if the family isn’t solid. Many of my friends who were working and middle class lived in nicer homes, but the family structure had fallen apart. So many people have money with the same problems as everyone else, and sometimes they have the worst problems. Drugs, Divorce.
I had a few friends who were white girls, very cool people, but I found myself liking their parents more than my high school friends. All of them lived in “country wood homes”, which were newly built very large two-story homes. A more upscale neighborhood. Just about most of my friends who lived in the upscale block were doing drugs, I don’t mean a blunt, I’m referring to hard drugs. Pam Hryn used to pop acid all the time, which she didn’t need to be, as she was hyperactive naturally. One friend her parents soon divorced, and after the kids turned 18, she was tired of her husband’s drinking.
My other girlfriend had the biggest losers for boyfriends who were threatening the family and they soon had to move. She had three abortions before we finished high school. I recall another good friend of mine who was adopted, she had five siblings and came from a single mom, I had no idea how her mother supported everyone, they lived in a great neighborhood, but not one decent stick of furniture was in the house ad they lived like pigs. Regardless of whether living in the right neighborhood to appear affluent means nothing when families have repeated the same problems in society. Drug abuse, pornography, domestic violence, alcoholism, divorce, and single parenting. There was a lot of this going on.
I had a friend in high school who also lived in the “country wood homes”, her father was a butcher he made a good living, and one day he thought it was okay to molest our friend. She was only sixteen, it was a disgrace and we didn’t know what to do. After that, the friendship was over, when Elaine placed the blame on our other friend, instead of her father. No one ever spoke to each other again. She was wrong but embarrassed her father did this. Many years later her parents divorced.
People can be rich or poor, and there will always be a judgment about living well or not, but what matters most is what is going on in the home. Parents should be teaching their children but very few do, or can. Family values, morals, self-love, respect, how to avoid a sex offender. Communicating with their kids is extremely important and parents lack to do this for several reasons: too many kids in the house, both parents having to work and sometimes there’s just not enough time. Or maybe they just don’t know how to explain all of this.
Some of my dysfunctional friends in high school enjoyed talking shit to me at times. One day Michelle tells me some crap about my father not caring about me, now as an adult, I realize she was speaking about herself. My father always worked hard and had a career. He wasn’t perfect because I dealt with his negative attitude at times, but at least he wasn’t a heroin addict like her father was, in and out of prison all the time. Her family was highly dysfunctional and her mom was moving every couple of months.
So the next time you feel a bit jealous or envy creeps in about what other people have and how they live, just remember to ask yourself, “how solid are they, as a family”? Or do you see signs of being dysfunctional and abusive? You never really know how people are living or what lies beneath. Appearing affluent and prosperous doesn’t mean shit when the family is in a train wreck!
Living In The Right Neighborhood Doesn’t Matter, what’s Inside the Home Does. Human character defines who you are, where you live doesn’t. It doesn’t matter where you live, it matters how you feel about who you are and where you come from. The rest isn’t important at all, it only appears as it should.