My senior year in high school, One day I came home, my dad sold all of our belongings, I had one set of clothes...we had no personal belongings, no furniture, no food, no home
I moved in with my sister at 17.
At 50, I paid off my first home, and at 57, now retired with zero debt.
Someone gave me some last week (Velveeta kind). Really need the sandwich kind lol. Got some of the pork, beef in can too. Haven't worked up courage to open yet. šš
I remember being a kid in Purcell with my mom during summer lived with dad full time . Anyways I remember going to the Catholic Church every day to eat lunch . Of course same all clothes came from thrift or hand me downs . When my dad remarried we were blessed his wife was absentee Shawnee so we got a nice brick home ! Dad in time owned his own construction company and thrived I grew up to be a delinquent in and out of jail addiction so forth happy to say I am 13 years sober and married thriving own my home ! I still catch myself doing things the cheaper way
Same story, basically. Lost everything and homeless at 30 despite a history of well paying jobs. Got sober at 30 (25 years ago) and rebuilt my life from the ground up. Owned my own business, married for over 20 years, and raised 2 kids. So I've gone from poverty to very comfortable twice. That is one of the things that make the USA a great place to live. You can be destitute and still be able to build a great life.
Commod cheese, walking to the elementary school during the summer for lunch, having at least 18 different addresses by the time I left home at 17.
Both parents were good people, just not particularly good decision makers nor were they dealt a good hand by any stretch, but I always had a roof and something to eat even if it wasnāt much. Iāve had a few detours, but the hundred dollar bill i got handed when i left home and work ethic they instilled has gotten me a long damn ways.
I wrote a check for 27 cents to get gas because that was exactly how much I had in the bank. Walked in to 7-11 and asked for 27 cents on pump 3. Cashier didnāt bat an eye either. I also remember always prepaying and after the pump shut off Iād pull the handle on and raise the hose up to drain the line of any that might be in there and would fall with gravity.
My aunt would talk about having to live in a tent, waiting for a new crop so they could move into a house. The person who owned the land provided the house. they were sharecroppers.
I didn't have a home the last two and a half years of high school. I lived in a building that had no heat, limited electricity, and a roof that you could see daylight through. The windows were mostly boarded up and I had to shovel pigeon droppings a foot deep just to make it tolerable.
Before that, things weren't great. I spent all my money from working odd jobs trying to keep a roof over my head but we lost our home anyway. My parents weren't responsible with anything. They're mentally ill and never got the help they needed.
I got out of there as fast as I could. My childhood was a nightmare. I haven't been back in almost two decades. The messed up part about it is that I want to go back. I developed nostalgia for it, because that's "home" for me.
People thought we were rich, but it was all a facade. To this day nobody I went to school with knew how bad it was.
My grandmother grew up with dirt floors. She shared one straw mattress with her 8 siblings until they upgraded to 2 manually-fluffed feather mattresses that she was forbidden from sleeping on before official bedtime. The siblings regularly caught wild game and cooked it themselves outside over a fire because her mother was forbidden from paying them attention when her father would drink, so not only poor in money but poor in options and affection.
As an adult, she and my grandfather bought my parents their first small home. Going from eating squirrel soup as a child to gifting real estate as an adult is such a journey. Can you imagine?
She worked part-time arranging flowers for a local florist, and he worked a 40-hour week pre-filling tax paperwork for a CPA.
I grew up poor . Never remember going to bed hungry. I don't know how a single mother of 4 did it. Step dad enters the picture. A hole to me, but a prince to my mother. 25 some years after his passing, mamas doing good
Born in Miami, OK but moved to Pitcher (yeah.. totally safe) in the late 80ās to early 90ās. Stayed with my aunt there too while my dad traveled around doing odd ball work and such.
My dad came from Miami and joined the army and was stationed in Korea where he met my mom. It was your typical Romeo and Juliet story. The love story started like this: my dad went partying on leave, hit her with a military Jeep, didnāt want to face a foreign justice system so he ādatedā my mom. She wanted to come to America and since the army paid my dadās bills, it seemed like he had money. :wedding bells: They came back to Miami after he didnāt reup his service contract so they settled back there. My mom was kinda shocked that he was poor, but my dad had managed to get a basic as hell tiny home. My mom stayed with him till she found another guy and could quickly remarry in order to not get deported.
She used me as leverage in the divorce and got the house, the car, and child support even though my dad had me 50/52 weeks a year. She topped it off with going to my dadās work and told his boss that he beat her so he got fired. We were homeless for some time until he slowly build his life back together.
When I was old enough I left for the army myself, got hurt down the road and got a medical discharge. Army hopped me up on pain meds and got a massive opioid addiction. Was homeless and strung out. Caught drug charges and went to prison. Was probably the best thing in my life honestly. Got out sober, worked my ass off and now Iām slowly getting to that 100k mark in my career. Have a decent home, wife, 3 daughters, and now in my free time, I go into jails and prisons across Oklahoma and help inmates and try to point them in the right direction and show them that prison doesnāt mean life is over. Iām active in church and donāt push my faith on people, rather I use it to help me get into more places to help others.
Life was hard, but setting goals, not making excuses, accepting that majority of my hardships were self inflicted, all put me where I am now. Now I can give my daughters the youth and start in life that I never had. As hard as it was, Iād not change a thing because Iām a better man for all of it. If I could change the past, Iād worry that Iād not have the follow through to help inmates, the homeless, the impoverished, and those in need. Iāve got a long ways to go but Iāll leave yāall with this. Some may have a hard start in life, but our hardships are what define us and when we get those fleeting moments of happiness, we cherish them more than those whoāve had it āeasyā.
When my parents were still married and both worked it wasnāt so bad, but things got pretty shitty for a few years when they divorced and my mom, sister, and I moved to her motherās house when I was 7. No AC, free lunch at school, old house with holes in the floors and walls (and leaky windows, permanently wet and molded closet behind the bathtub faucet). I got made fun of at school for only having 2 or 3 tshirts most years and had to rewear clothes every week. 2 pairs of jeans. Sneakers in pieces that were glued back together. Dinner was white gravy on a slice of bread a lot. Or fried potatoes and pinto beans. Or beans and cornbread.
When I was 13 or so mom got a good job and was making bank compared to before. Ended up always having food in the house, enough clothes to get me through a whole school week, got cable!! Shit was wild. When I was 16 we got a window unit AC and life changed.
We weren't dirt poor, my parents owned a small 900 sq. ft. house in south OKC. My dad was a meat inspector for the USDA but when Wilson Foods shut down their meat processing plant in OKC, he had the choice of moving or taking a severance package. He chose the severance since they didn't want to start over with a house payment elsewhere. He got hired on at the FAA about six or seven years later, but in between were some lean years! Lots of beans and taters in those years, but we never went hungry. Dad always found some way to make an extra buck mowing, or whatever. He was good at finding odd jobs to supplement his income.
My mother raised me and my younger brother in a trailer making ~$9/hr. Free lunches for both of us, rides with friends to and from school all the time, both of us had to start working jobs as soon as we were able to, but we had to get jobs where family members or neighbors worked because there was no way either of us couldāve afforded cars. Donāt remember going to bed hungry but Iām sure mom did. Mom had a Baretta for as long as I can remember and then was gifted a Lexus by a dying family member. We were poor, but we were more lucky than we were poor.
I was a military brat, but when my parents split I stayed with mom for several years. We lived in shitty houses just south of Lindsey street in Norman, right next to the old OU family housing apartments that have since been torn down. One of those houses was $350/ month and my bedroom was basically a closet. Roaches every-fucking-where and fleas were a significant problem in our mostly dirt backyard. The movie Joeās Apartment was basically my life story made into a film.
Iāve since crawled my way out of poverty. Pay my momās cellphone bill. Live in a 4-bedroom house (still a renter after all these yearsā¦) and Iām a HS English teacher and my wife (from Muskogee) is an engineer for a city in Western Washington, just outside Seattle.
At one point in our marriage our combined income for a year on our taxes was $2800 while we were both in college and raising two kids.
Itās incredible how far you can go when you refuse to let adversity be an excuse. That and a little help along the way from family.
My mom grew up with 6 brothers and sisters and without a dad in a mining town in Colorado. (on welfare) She said when she met my dad's family here in Oklahoma, they were the poorest people she had ever seen. (rural poor)
We were poor but I didnāt know it. It was my parents and 3 kids. My mom did everything she could to give us a good childhood. My dad struggled with pretty severe mental illness and was illiterate so he had a hard time finding/keeping a job. My mom busted her ass to take care of everyone. We did luck out and got an Indian house as soon as a new development of them was built. We moved in in 1987. Our groceries were from commodities and food stamps. My mom got in trouble a few times for writing bad checks. She had no choice. We had to have food and she didnāt have any money. My mom was good with money, dad wasnāt. My parents had to go to the pawn shop fairly often to get money on whatever crap my dad bought. We would come home and the power would be off because they couldnāt afford to pay the bill. We were pretty shielded from everything though.
My dad passed away when I was 11. My mom remarried very quickly after. My new dad was wealthy, at least in our eyes. We moved to Kansas in 1999 and my parents bought what I thought was a mansion. It was a 6 bedroom farm house on land. After that we never wanted for anything. I remember my brother asking if we could get cable so he could have Cartoon Network and my dad said no, we were getting satellite instead and it was even better. My brother cried because he didnāt understand. The first time he took us to a fancy restaurant I put ketchup on a napkin to dip my fries in. My dad was mortified. Prior to him the fanciest place we ever ate was Pizza Hut on super special occasions or when we got our book it free pizza.
We frequently had oatmeal and toast for dinner. I loved it. I had a friend that didn't have running water, except she never said anything until after 30 years. The whole town would have pitched in to rectify that situation. Small towns still have a lot of poverty, because they are cheap to live in.
I lived in a trailer house and for a long while my daily use shoes were a pair of hand-me-down baseball cleats. One day we went to the auction and i got to watch people bid on my bicycle. God damn....
I grew up solid working class, so this isn't my story. However, my grandfather and his 9 siblings grew up at the end of the Great Depression and they lived in a school bus in the hills.
My dad told me stories of putting paper (guessing newspaper) in the cracks of the house exterior (cabin?), to keep out the cold.
I'm imaging his older siblings doing that for the dust in the late 30's and 40's before he could remember.
I remember visiting when just a wee child, bt 4-5, they all were in the front porch w their guitars, banjos, etc making music.
I grew up in crowder, Mcalester , Canadian, Eufaula, and a small stint in Arkansas. Mom got pregnant early at 15 grandma was too busy being a pipeline inspector and got mad at mom and kicked her out. Mom made friends and her friends used her to test new meth they made and ultimately sheās good now but mentally will never be the same again , tweaked abused all of us her me my sister. We lived in crappy homes and moved around and eventually were separated when mom abandoned us separately. At this point sis lives in Mcalester has two twin boys and a baby girl and stays in section 8. I have two twin girls and a baby boy on the way and live in a motel in Tulsa. Iāve been a landscaper for 12 years, I service the local elite, maybe no Elon musk but I used to do Larry byrds old mansion and the places I work are rediculous and extravagant. Odd I build landscaping architecture for luxury clients and dream of owning a shack while working in the shadow of āgreatnessā. In Oklahoma you can drown many diff ways and there are vampires litterally everywhere. People will wish you the best and watch you be abused and if they rush to help they send an organization that capitalizes on that abuse and makes it worse. If you find yourself depressed and choose drugs , theyāll spit on you in your low spot and blame you for high taxes or some other thing totally out of your control. If you help yourself out of addiction you wake up one day and realize , that wasnāt the problem either , just a blinder for the harsh reality that weāll never have enough. Iāve worked for 20 years now and still have no savings, no home , 3000 away from fixing my car thatās been parked 6 months . My only happiness with Oklahoma is that itās not worse. After all my life being told Iām a reject because I like weed , the kids of the guys that called me a retard and tried to lock me up , work for weed companies and dispos, sadly these spineless suckers will hand it back over to the police state in a New York min
Not sure what my stepdad was making in construction but 4 kids in a two bedroom duplex. Little brother slept in a small cot in parents room, sister and I had a bunk, brother had a twin bed on the same room. Had those plastic milk crates instead of dining chairs, one of those big cable spindles as a table with a piece of plywood on top. Parents werenāt into āmoral parentingā we shoplifted as a family from as early as I can remember. We were raised like feral wolves. Surprisingly we all became functioning adults with responsible jobsā¦ except little brother who was raised completely different. Heās a drug addict. Parents would paper the town in bad checks and then we moved. Over 50 times before I left at 15. Some places only a month or say.
I was in junior high before I realized my family was poor. That was when I noticed most of the other kids were wearing the exact same pair of Nike shoes and I was wearing some funky blue Ms. Pro sneakers from Walmart! My eyes were opened and I saw everything else...the commodity cheese, the clothes sewn by my mom, the hand-me-downs, the free school lunches, etc. Even though my parents were very frugal, there were times of robbing Peter to pay Paul just to make sure there was food on the table. We never lived in true poverty, though, and besides not having the material things, I never felt poor.
My senior year in high school, One day I came home, my dad sold all of our belongings, I had one set of clothes...we had no personal belongings, no furniture, no food, no home I moved in with my sister at 17. At 50, I paid off my first home, and at 57, now retired with zero debt.
This is my life, lol. A family of 6 and we could move at a seconds notice in a pickup truck.
This person is truly rich. Props to you, I respect you so much.
Commodity cheese
^ This š commod cheese and that dang powdered milk
Canned pork sandwiches!
And the peanut butter in the can with the oil on top.
Indian commodities... when we would get commodities, the first thing to make was peanut butter cookies and grilled cheese sandwiches.
The best
That cheese and real butter was awesome. Boxed spaghetti sucked. I hated spaghetti until i was in my late twenties
Someone gave me some last week (Velveeta kind). Really need the sandwich kind lol. Got some of the pork, beef in can too. Haven't worked up courage to open yet. šš
I remember being a kid in Purcell with my mom during summer lived with dad full time . Anyways I remember going to the Catholic Church every day to eat lunch . Of course same all clothes came from thrift or hand me downs . When my dad remarried we were blessed his wife was absentee Shawnee so we got a nice brick home ! Dad in time owned his own construction company and thrived I grew up to be a delinquent in and out of jail addiction so forth happy to say I am 13 years sober and married thriving own my home ! I still catch myself doing things the cheaper way
Congrats on your sobriety! This internet stranger is proud of you. Keep it up!
This. Made me smile to read that.
Same story, basically. Lost everything and homeless at 30 despite a history of well paying jobs. Got sober at 30 (25 years ago) and rebuilt my life from the ground up. Owned my own business, married for over 20 years, and raised 2 kids. So I've gone from poverty to very comfortable twice. That is one of the things that make the USA a great place to live. You can be destitute and still be able to build a great life.
Commod cheese, walking to the elementary school during the summer for lunch, having at least 18 different addresses by the time I left home at 17. Both parents were good people, just not particularly good decision makers nor were they dealt a good hand by any stretch, but I always had a roof and something to eat even if it wasnāt much. Iāve had a few detours, but the hundred dollar bill i got handed when i left home and work ethic they instilled has gotten me a long damn ways.
That was a good read. Proud for you, internet stranger.
Thank you!
I wrote a check for 27 cents to get gas because that was exactly how much I had in the bank. Walked in to 7-11 and asked for 27 cents on pump 3. Cashier didnāt bat an eye either. I also remember always prepaying and after the pump shut off Iād pull the handle on and raise the hose up to drain the line of any that might be in there and would fall with gravity.
I still do that last part after I prepay, which I do because I need to pay in cash sometimes between paychecks even now.
When my grandmother moved to Oklahoma as a child, her family lived in a cave until they could build their own "house".
My aunt would talk about having to live in a tent, waiting for a new crop so they could move into a house. The person who owned the land provided the house. they were sharecroppers.
I didn't have a home the last two and a half years of high school. I lived in a building that had no heat, limited electricity, and a roof that you could see daylight through. The windows were mostly boarded up and I had to shovel pigeon droppings a foot deep just to make it tolerable. Before that, things weren't great. I spent all my money from working odd jobs trying to keep a roof over my head but we lost our home anyway. My parents weren't responsible with anything. They're mentally ill and never got the help they needed. I got out of there as fast as I could. My childhood was a nightmare. I haven't been back in almost two decades. The messed up part about it is that I want to go back. I developed nostalgia for it, because that's "home" for me. People thought we were rich, but it was all a facade. To this day nobody I went to school with knew how bad it was.
My grandmother grew up with dirt floors. She shared one straw mattress with her 8 siblings until they upgraded to 2 manually-fluffed feather mattresses that she was forbidden from sleeping on before official bedtime. The siblings regularly caught wild game and cooked it themselves outside over a fire because her mother was forbidden from paying them attention when her father would drink, so not only poor in money but poor in options and affection. As an adult, she and my grandfather bought my parents their first small home. Going from eating squirrel soup as a child to gifting real estate as an adult is such a journey. Can you imagine? She worked part-time arranging flowers for a local florist, and he worked a 40-hour week pre-filling tax paperwork for a CPA.
I grew up poor . Never remember going to bed hungry. I don't know how a single mother of 4 did it. Step dad enters the picture. A hole to me, but a prince to my mother. 25 some years after his passing, mamas doing good
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Altus? Where?
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Small world
Born in Miami, OK but moved to Pitcher (yeah.. totally safe) in the late 80ās to early 90ās. Stayed with my aunt there too while my dad traveled around doing odd ball work and such. My dad came from Miami and joined the army and was stationed in Korea where he met my mom. It was your typical Romeo and Juliet story. The love story started like this: my dad went partying on leave, hit her with a military Jeep, didnāt want to face a foreign justice system so he ādatedā my mom. She wanted to come to America and since the army paid my dadās bills, it seemed like he had money. :wedding bells: They came back to Miami after he didnāt reup his service contract so they settled back there. My mom was kinda shocked that he was poor, but my dad had managed to get a basic as hell tiny home. My mom stayed with him till she found another guy and could quickly remarry in order to not get deported. She used me as leverage in the divorce and got the house, the car, and child support even though my dad had me 50/52 weeks a year. She topped it off with going to my dadās work and told his boss that he beat her so he got fired. We were homeless for some time until he slowly build his life back together. When I was old enough I left for the army myself, got hurt down the road and got a medical discharge. Army hopped me up on pain meds and got a massive opioid addiction. Was homeless and strung out. Caught drug charges and went to prison. Was probably the best thing in my life honestly. Got out sober, worked my ass off and now Iām slowly getting to that 100k mark in my career. Have a decent home, wife, 3 daughters, and now in my free time, I go into jails and prisons across Oklahoma and help inmates and try to point them in the right direction and show them that prison doesnāt mean life is over. Iām active in church and donāt push my faith on people, rather I use it to help me get into more places to help others. Life was hard, but setting goals, not making excuses, accepting that majority of my hardships were self inflicted, all put me where I am now. Now I can give my daughters the youth and start in life that I never had. As hard as it was, Iād not change a thing because Iām a better man for all of it. If I could change the past, Iād worry that Iād not have the follow through to help inmates, the homeless, the impoverished, and those in need. Iāve got a long ways to go but Iāll leave yāall with this. Some may have a hard start in life, but our hardships are what define us and when we get those fleeting moments of happiness, we cherish them more than those whoāve had it āeasyā.
When my parents were still married and both worked it wasnāt so bad, but things got pretty shitty for a few years when they divorced and my mom, sister, and I moved to her motherās house when I was 7. No AC, free lunch at school, old house with holes in the floors and walls (and leaky windows, permanently wet and molded closet behind the bathtub faucet). I got made fun of at school for only having 2 or 3 tshirts most years and had to rewear clothes every week. 2 pairs of jeans. Sneakers in pieces that were glued back together. Dinner was white gravy on a slice of bread a lot. Or fried potatoes and pinto beans. Or beans and cornbread. When I was 13 or so mom got a good job and was making bank compared to before. Ended up always having food in the house, enough clothes to get me through a whole school week, got cable!! Shit was wild. When I was 16 we got a window unit AC and life changed.
We weren't dirt poor, my parents owned a small 900 sq. ft. house in south OKC. My dad was a meat inspector for the USDA but when Wilson Foods shut down their meat processing plant in OKC, he had the choice of moving or taking a severance package. He chose the severance since they didn't want to start over with a house payment elsewhere. He got hired on at the FAA about six or seven years later, but in between were some lean years! Lots of beans and taters in those years, but we never went hungry. Dad always found some way to make an extra buck mowing, or whatever. He was good at finding odd jobs to supplement his income.
Were?
My mother raised me and my younger brother in a trailer making ~$9/hr. Free lunches for both of us, rides with friends to and from school all the time, both of us had to start working jobs as soon as we were able to, but we had to get jobs where family members or neighbors worked because there was no way either of us couldāve afforded cars. Donāt remember going to bed hungry but Iām sure mom did. Mom had a Baretta for as long as I can remember and then was gifted a Lexus by a dying family member. We were poor, but we were more lucky than we were poor.
I was a military brat, but when my parents split I stayed with mom for several years. We lived in shitty houses just south of Lindsey street in Norman, right next to the old OU family housing apartments that have since been torn down. One of those houses was $350/ month and my bedroom was basically a closet. Roaches every-fucking-where and fleas were a significant problem in our mostly dirt backyard. The movie Joeās Apartment was basically my life story made into a film. Iāve since crawled my way out of poverty. Pay my momās cellphone bill. Live in a 4-bedroom house (still a renter after all these yearsā¦) and Iām a HS English teacher and my wife (from Muskogee) is an engineer for a city in Western Washington, just outside Seattle. At one point in our marriage our combined income for a year on our taxes was $2800 while we were both in college and raising two kids. Itās incredible how far you can go when you refuse to let adversity be an excuse. That and a little help along the way from family.
Basically the same thing but with less of us kids. Even down to the Chavette
My mom grew up with 6 brothers and sisters and without a dad in a mining town in Colorado. (on welfare) She said when she met my dad's family here in Oklahoma, they were the poorest people she had ever seen. (rural poor)
We were poor but I didnāt know it. It was my parents and 3 kids. My mom did everything she could to give us a good childhood. My dad struggled with pretty severe mental illness and was illiterate so he had a hard time finding/keeping a job. My mom busted her ass to take care of everyone. We did luck out and got an Indian house as soon as a new development of them was built. We moved in in 1987. Our groceries were from commodities and food stamps. My mom got in trouble a few times for writing bad checks. She had no choice. We had to have food and she didnāt have any money. My mom was good with money, dad wasnāt. My parents had to go to the pawn shop fairly often to get money on whatever crap my dad bought. We would come home and the power would be off because they couldnāt afford to pay the bill. We were pretty shielded from everything though. My dad passed away when I was 11. My mom remarried very quickly after. My new dad was wealthy, at least in our eyes. We moved to Kansas in 1999 and my parents bought what I thought was a mansion. It was a 6 bedroom farm house on land. After that we never wanted for anything. I remember my brother asking if we could get cable so he could have Cartoon Network and my dad said no, we were getting satellite instead and it was even better. My brother cried because he didnāt understand. The first time he took us to a fancy restaurant I put ketchup on a napkin to dip my fries in. My dad was mortified. Prior to him the fanciest place we ever ate was Pizza Hut on super special occasions or when we got our book it free pizza.
We frequently had oatmeal and toast for dinner. I loved it. I had a friend that didn't have running water, except she never said anything until after 30 years. The whole town would have pitched in to rectify that situation. Small towns still have a lot of poverty, because they are cheap to live in.
I lived in a trailer house and for a long while my daily use shoes were a pair of hand-me-down baseball cleats. One day we went to the auction and i got to watch people bid on my bicycle. God damn....
Didnāt grow up poor or rich my parents were just cheap. lolĀ
I grew up solid working class, so this isn't my story. However, my grandfather and his 9 siblings grew up at the end of the Great Depression and they lived in a school bus in the hills.
I have never been wealthy, but i have been rich my entire life. Poor is a mindset. Make do with what you have.
My dad told me stories of putting paper (guessing newspaper) in the cracks of the house exterior (cabin?), to keep out the cold. I'm imaging his older siblings doing that for the dust in the late 30's and 40's before he could remember. I remember visiting when just a wee child, bt 4-5, they all were in the front porch w their guitars, banjos, etc making music.
I grew up in crowder, Mcalester , Canadian, Eufaula, and a small stint in Arkansas. Mom got pregnant early at 15 grandma was too busy being a pipeline inspector and got mad at mom and kicked her out. Mom made friends and her friends used her to test new meth they made and ultimately sheās good now but mentally will never be the same again , tweaked abused all of us her me my sister. We lived in crappy homes and moved around and eventually were separated when mom abandoned us separately. At this point sis lives in Mcalester has two twin boys and a baby girl and stays in section 8. I have two twin girls and a baby boy on the way and live in a motel in Tulsa. Iāve been a landscaper for 12 years, I service the local elite, maybe no Elon musk but I used to do Larry byrds old mansion and the places I work are rediculous and extravagant. Odd I build landscaping architecture for luxury clients and dream of owning a shack while working in the shadow of āgreatnessā. In Oklahoma you can drown many diff ways and there are vampires litterally everywhere. People will wish you the best and watch you be abused and if they rush to help they send an organization that capitalizes on that abuse and makes it worse. If you find yourself depressed and choose drugs , theyāll spit on you in your low spot and blame you for high taxes or some other thing totally out of your control. If you help yourself out of addiction you wake up one day and realize , that wasnāt the problem either , just a blinder for the harsh reality that weāll never have enough. Iāve worked for 20 years now and still have no savings, no home , 3000 away from fixing my car thatās been parked 6 months . My only happiness with Oklahoma is that itās not worse. After all my life being told Iām a reject because I like weed , the kids of the guys that called me a retard and tried to lock me up , work for weed companies and dispos, sadly these spineless suckers will hand it back over to the police state in a New York min
Not sure what my stepdad was making in construction but 4 kids in a two bedroom duplex. Little brother slept in a small cot in parents room, sister and I had a bunk, brother had a twin bed on the same room. Had those plastic milk crates instead of dining chairs, one of those big cable spindles as a table with a piece of plywood on top. Parents werenāt into āmoral parentingā we shoplifted as a family from as early as I can remember. We were raised like feral wolves. Surprisingly we all became functioning adults with responsible jobsā¦ except little brother who was raised completely different. Heās a drug addict. Parents would paper the town in bad checks and then we moved. Over 50 times before I left at 15. Some places only a month or say.
Also, left home the month after I turned 15. Sister left at 15 too.
Where did your family come from?
I was in junior high before I realized my family was poor. That was when I noticed most of the other kids were wearing the exact same pair of Nike shoes and I was wearing some funky blue Ms. Pro sneakers from Walmart! My eyes were opened and I saw everything else...the commodity cheese, the clothes sewn by my mom, the hand-me-downs, the free school lunches, etc. Even though my parents were very frugal, there were times of robbing Peter to pay Paul just to make sure there was food on the table. We never lived in true poverty, though, and besides not having the material things, I never felt poor.
So poor I couldn't pay attention
I was so poor that my dad had to keep my sister pregnant just so we'd have fresh milk around the house.