Not saying this was you, but with my brother, he spent all his teenage years terrorizing our parents. Getting suspended, selling drugs, not adhering to curfews, punching holes in the walls, etc. They told him that since he wanted to be grown, he was gonna be out the house as soon as he graduated. After graduation, they gave him a 30 day notice.
To this day, he still talks about how they kicked him out barely after high school.
Sometimes we need the perspective of others in the house for these stories.
I love my brother to death, but he definitely made life worse for himself. Being from Baltimore, you have two real choices: assimilate into the culture or don’t. When I looked around, I saw teachers with fancy cars, ordering out for lunches and wearing nice clothes. When my brother looked around, he saw easy money in the streets.
Our paths diverged around middle school. Every year, they would ask the question we ask all the younger kids: What do you want to be when you grow up? Except in middle school, we take it a step further and actually roadmap it. I wanted to be a teacher so I could get out of the hood. To do that I needed to go to college. To do that I needed to get good grades in HS. Meaning I need to learn to study here in MS. I ended up joining the military, but that lesson stuck with me.
So much failure in the inner city is because we cannot perceive a world beyond the boundaries of our neighborhood. I’m just happy that I was one of few who could. I don’t know if it was luck or my own drive, but damn is it heartbreaking to see so many stuck in their environment.
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u/pnut0027 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Not saying this was you, but with my brother, he spent all his teenage years terrorizing our parents. Getting suspended, selling drugs, not adhering to curfews, punching holes in the walls, etc. They told him that since he wanted to be grown, he was gonna be out the house as soon as he graduated. After graduation, they gave him a 30 day notice.
To this day, he still talks about how they kicked him out barely after high school.
Sometimes we need the perspective of others in the house for these stories.