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Originally Posted by WarChild
When my father left my mother, she was left with no education, no money and two children. We were poor. I had one pair of shoes and two pair of pants to last me an entire school year. My sister and I were ridiculed and teased through out grade school.
My mom worked a full time job, raised two children as best she could, and went to school part time for 12 years to get an accounting degree and later an MBA to make a better life for herself and her children. I remember her being tired and worn out my entire childhood. She never once complained, took welfare or blamed anyone else for her woes.
Don't tell me what poor people can and can not do. It's more a matter of what poor people will or will not do. The opportunities are there, it's what you make of them.
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Ditto.. my father left my mother when I was 8... she was 26 and had 5 kids. We ended up on welfare. Instead of going to work, my mother sat on her fat ass and drank pepsi, ate cheez-its and watched television. Then she started going out at night to bars to pick up any dick that would stick her and ended up with 2 more babies and another ex-husband.
I left home when I was 16 because I simply could not tolerate the abuse my mother heaped upon us. There were 2 things I knew when I left home. Stay out of trouble and if I wanted to learn anything, I could go to the library. I quit school 5 diifferent times going through my junior year in high school, got a GED in 1981 and to this day there are many people who know me that think I have a college education. Am I anything special, no. I just used common sense and had the desire to raise myself above the level in which I had become trapped through no fault of my own.
I've never had to do anything illegal to keep beans on the table and I thank God for the intellect he blessed me with so I could learn what I needed to learn when I needed to learn it. Yes, there were some very difficult times and some hard lessons to learn, but I did it and I didn't ever once have to ask my family for anything.
Both of my brothers ended up in jail on more than one occassion, and 3 of my 4 sisters ended up with welfare babies and lousy husbands. None of them have ever made anything of themselves. My mother is a drunk and she likes it that way, fucking one loser after another.
I've been a programmer now for more than 34 years, taught myself several different computer languages and made my opportunities when I could.
Yes, I was as poor as poor could have been, but I knew that the only way I wasn't going to be poor for the rest of my life was to do my best to not repeat the mistakes of my parents and my siblings.
When someone tells me they've done the best they could with the tools they had to use, I tell them that's just a cop out and they're lazy.
The problem with the welfare system in this country is that it removes the incentive from people and it destroys their sense of initiative. And now we have paid for this by raising an entire generation of neanderthals who behave like animals and have no respect for authority or any pride in themselves.
I'll get off my soapbox now.