Move out of the Hood, or no?

I don't know if you read any of my other posts, but I also was stressing the importance of having a good community to relate to in general. Whether or not that's important to other posters, well, that kinda would be the question. Not everybody has to be on my dick like "we're neighbors, kumbaya, my Lord", but a small sense of inclusion could go a long way. Especially when people get that age to settle down, which is approaching for me (in some respects).

 

good show brutha.

Its funny because I sit and think about to where I came from and where I am now. My father kept us off welfare, kept us out of the project but we were PO. Still we have everything we NEEDED, and very few of our wants.

I can remember going to my grandmother's house for the summer, if you wanted to take a hot bath you had to build a fire under the tub. You also had to truck water from the pump about 50 feet to the tub.

...and you had to take the COLD shower and wash before you got into the tub. We have 11 people living in a four bedroom house with ONE TV...and the TV stayed on whatever my father wanted to watch. I grew up around all the drugs and crime, and violence, but for some reason it stayed away from my home.

I wouldn't trade where I come from for the world...but I am truly blessed and happy I don't have to raise my children in the same station.

 

I wasn't hanging out - I was out looking for a job (NOT on the street corner). I had walked up to this club which was closed, and this little hoodrat came around the corner. I tried to talk to him like a normal person, but I guess he just couldn't handle it.

Nope, not hippies. Conservative Christian (uber) and my dad was kind of a dictator. Their family always kind of lived off of the grid - he grew up poor in Louisiana and took a lot of that mentality with him. Every man has to have a farm and wear cowboy boots, that kind of thing. He's addicted to that Farm channel and Fox News now. They were the kind that stocked up for Y2K lol.

 

Yep, we definitely have our own personal journeys that shape us YMRA.

It can either make you strong and rise above it or continue the cycle as is often the case.

I always prided myself on knowing there was more in the world and wanting to see and experience it. Which is why I am big on cultures, travel, etc. I never stop wanting to learn about other places.

 

Should have given him one slap, dude had no respect at all.

Ah, I see. LOL @ farm channel addict, they sound like they are deeply rural and countrified.

I think its interesting hearing everyone's story and getting an idea of what experiences influenced us in life. Provides a great backdrop that led up to our individual lives today.

 

Well what can I say, my life has been pretty easy.

 

I tried to run after him, but I had high heels on, and then I remembered my laptop - if I caught him and hit him, he could easily have stolen it, and it has all of my resource material for future paintings, not to mention that I would not be able to afford another one.

Parental Unit is more just plain ODD and overly religious. My dad has quirky interests, but he actually has a master's degree in biology and is a teacher - he's kind of like Grizzly Adams (read: scary). My mother is a nurse and is ditzy like Aunt Bea of Mayberry. They're not too cultured and don't really care much about my art in a REAL sense (they can't discuss things with me because I'm over their heads and they know it - they also choose to remain ignorant). The last family event we had was taking the nephews to a huge Amish fair out in the country - there were like 1000s of Amish and Mennonites from all over the country. My dad freaking loves them.

It is indeed very interesting to see what other's lives have been like, how it has made us who we are.

 

I'm staying here and my man will be coming home to me here. He is from "the hood" in a city of about 255,890. I'm from a town of about 8,612. I think it'd be easier for him to go from a larger more dangerous place to a smaller, safer place, than it'd be for me to go from a smaller, more safer place to a larger more dangerous one. People there are murdered, robbed, raped, etc almost every day. Here, those things are almost non-existent. I'm sure later we'll probably move to a bigger place. But I'm sure I will not ever live in any hoods. No offense to hood folks.

 

Wait!! You ain't been to the hood?? Awww man!! And here I was thinking all this time you were gangsta like a mofo.....

 

I've been to my man's hood before, with him. Except this one time, I went with a couple of friends of mine trying to find my man in the hood while we were not getting along at that time. That time, a crackhead who looked almost exactly like the rapper Method Man and whose eyes were the reddest I've ever seen eyes, peeked through the car window that was open a couple inches and told me I was a cutie and he wanted to eat me up. I told my man about it later and he was so mad, ahaha, that I went (without him "to protect me") and that a crackhead tried to holla at me.
I also grew up in as close to a hood as this little town could have, I think.

 

You think?

Just stay out hood from now on Ms. Gigglebox. We don't want you ending up as a crazy crackhead's snack in more ways than one.

 

Yes, I think, heh. I'm just a sheltered small town white girl and I don't know all the criteria that makes a hood a hood. I just grew up in a housing project for low income families. We didn't have a lot of crime or drugs, except a few pot heads here and there. A lot of welfare parents who wouldn't watch or actually parent their kids. Except my mom though she was still kind of passive and I got away with a lot. But anyway, yea.

No problemo!!!

 

please define hood. Is that suppose to be the neighborhood?

 

See, that is what I basically meant, the neighborhood. But there is a connotation I guess that means the "hood" is bad in general. That said, I only live in an area of about 115,000, and the south side I have lived in for most of my life has had bad public housing (or ghettos, if we were to call it that, but they're still not comparable to say, Cabrini Green) which has fortunately been razed. So some areas undeniably are going to be better/worse and I'm only going upon my own living conditions, which is why I brought the topic up for discussion/comparison.

 

Fam work hard and get out. Last time I checked kids in suburbs aren't getting hit by strays like they're on the front lines in Iraq. Its fucking disgraceful and I don't get why its only like that in poor minority areas. I'm not saying poor whites are better but I don't hear about drivebys and in the street shootings in places like Maine or Iowa.

 

Poverty, drugs, guns and gangs are the potent combination coming together as one.

Combine that with a materialistic culture and lack of focus on education as the way forward, when you can instead make that quick money slinging drugs, try to become the next Kobe or Lebron or get a record deal and you see what's up.

 

ROFL no discussion of Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel or Edvard Munch "The Scream" with them I guess.

Yeah they sound pretty set in their tastes and ways.

 

i understand your point....but that's true in a lot of communities.....billionaires are materialistic,drug use is prevalent everywhere, rich and poor,black and white, and not to mention a celebrity-obssesed culture that both white and blacks emulate. imo i don't think it's some flaw in black ppl in the ghetto, i believe there are outside influences that play a large role in their conditions.

 

More like a falling out so he went back to stay with his family for a while.

 

In other words, it's somebody else's fault. Congrats, thinking like yours keeps ghetto-mindedness going.