The other night on the desk said our teenage son to us that the school is just as it was when we went to school, and we were simply not capable of understanding the kind of pressure they were under today. I have this story from almost all the children within the past year, how difficult their lives are, how much harder they work than we do, and they would have life belongs to trade with us in a heartbeat.
You want to trade places? With me? Oh, you little fool, you have no idea. If you want to knowgrown, what is life if you know about stress, hard work, and how much pain your body is really capable of handling, allow me to say, like about my life and let's see if you still want to trade:
I went to school at a time before the company has become so PC and forgiving that it views children sleep in class. ~ ~ When I was sleeping, or even tried, one would have been the office with me. Mouthing off, to the teachers? Better wear the padded jeans, because they still practiced corporal punishmentwhen I was in elementary school, and they hit hard.
Our generation was on the cutting edge of drug problems in schools, and it was our generation, "laughed the natural things like pansy pot and began cooking some really nasty synthetic stuff created. To this day, I am still amazed that I almost until the end of high school did before I got sucked into the crowd, because it was all around me, everywhere.
I suggest 2 years high school pretty much with the life of me on adaily basis. There is really no form of physical or mental humiliation that I did not undergo during those two years, and that fact alone is largely responsible for my really long fuse when it comes to holding back my rage, and my extreme disrespect for anyone who feels they have to dress, act, and be like everyone else.
I have learned that it takes guts to stand out and be different, and very few people have that.
I started working at 15. (Actually around 13, if you count mowing yards occasionally.) I didn’t have a huge allowance handed to me. I didn’t expect my parents to fork out for every little thing I wanted. They couldn’t afford to, and even if they could have, they wouldn’t. My parents wanted me to learn to respect what it took to earn a dollar, and feel the satisfaction of spending it well. This is one of the lesson I am most grateful for in my life: I’ve earned everything I have, and I’m proud of it.
If I wanted something I had to work for it and get it myself. I wanted a car and a nice guitar, so I cleaned bathrooms and filled shelves in shops until I paid for itself. And to this day I still have the guitar.
Since that first job to have, I was working 18 years non-stop. No summer, no winter and spring breaks. If I'm not in school, I worked. When I graduation I had my first full-time job within a week and a half, trenches and large stinking muddy swamp water leaks, here inFlorida, in the hottest part of the summer.
That pretty much set the tone for what my working career was like until I hit my mid-30’s: a long non-stop string of horrible, nasty jobs. If the job wasn’t physically horrible (like when I came down with chemically-induced pneumonia in New York from inhaling acid fumes all day long at a facility with no ventilation) they were mentally torturous.
But, I had to work. You don’t work, you don’t eat. I was never more than one week away from to lose everything. So when I was sick, I was working. If there are extra hours, I took it. Just when I finally started getting caught, I had married.
Let me put on record that up to this point, I thought I had beaten them all. Physically, mentally, I had it covered. I felt like life could throw me anything, and I could handle it, because I had already seen the worst.
You have no idea what real life is like until you have kids. None.
Suddenly, it isnot only me that I carry along, but my wife and children. Before, if I found was a terrible job, I just quit.
I have found in those early years in New York that I can feed myself for a whole week on a package of $ 0.88 hot dogs (for sale, because the expiration date sort) and a package of 0.50 $-Fresh Hot Dog Buns . I did not do for fun after the rent was paid, there are countless week when I was living less than $ 20 and more than half of that I use to train& Bus so I could get to work. (Did I hear you say "What is a car?" If your grocery budget for the week amounts to around U.S. $ 7, you can not afford a car. Period.)
But fasting (at that time I weighed 152 soaking wet, and I am 6 'tall) and the waiver taught me that I could do without if I had to. So when the job was bad enough, I could walk. But with a family, you can not do. Children are expensive, and they do not understand the concept of food rationing, if not more. If youhave a lot of other people dependent on you for their survival, they change your options.
If you are also working on a job with a terrible boss that you hate, and you know, you know that he just an excuse to fire you, but you need the money, so you hang on, man, you hang on. Suck it up, off they go, what to do, but do the job, because you have a family. There is no support from that responsibility.
If I could not overtime, I workeda second job. Everything I get for money. Yes, I packed food for Publix. I worked for the Police Benevolent Society and asked for donations. I sold vinyl siding on the phone. I did what I had to do.
After too many years from this ever-busy, only the lights on and keep food on the table, I decided to go to college so I could get a better paid job.
And again I thought I was the worst that life could be seen throwing at me. I can juggle, baby, I can juggle. Throw it up, I canhandle it. Lesson: don’t ever say “It can’t get any worse than this…” It can, and it will.
I found myself working a 50 hour weeks (remember, I still needed the overtime just to pay the bills) as a mechanic in a stifling factory with no air conditioning, going to school 1/2 time (if you do less than 1/2 time, then you do not qualify for a student loan. I had to maintain that.), doing hours of intense homework, and still doing what I can around the house. I got, if I was lucky, 3 to 4 Hours of sleep.
I did that for 4 and a half year.
I'm finally at the point where I make decent money, but like everything else that is relative. Everything is more expensive today are young ~ ~ (terribly expensive if you do not think that way you have never for a 14-year-old girl's shopping trip or pay) for the car insurance on a 16-year-old boy and even now, I'm just through.
Today I wake up at 4 and the work of a 10-hour day. I still do not understand in the summer,> Winter or spring breaks. I do not since I was 16th
I do not get vacation time, but that's almost always do to work around the house (to use as I will do) with my vacation this month. I have a total of 4 vacation had (only one week), I can in my entire adult life where I actually went on vacation and has to remember is not working.
I come home, and my wife and I make dinner. It is clean after eating, pick up the trash to think (young people, they are grown up,but they are actually doing nothing more than whining, the 8-year-olds run around in larger organizations) around the house, the bills and errands.
If we're lucky, we can for an hour to just relax and not for anyone else.
On the weekends there is more work: Grocery shopping, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, and a hundred other tasks, from which runs a house.
So kids, that's my story. Maybe help you understand why I laugh and say: "You have no idea, do!" whenThey talk about how hard life is now. One day you will, the frustration of trying this on your own teenager who thinks they already understand, understand to explain everything. It's like trying to explain nuclear fission to a 5-year-old: they are simply not equipped to even understand.
So yes, I'm all in. I'll be happy to sleep in until 6:30, go to school, trade, when I had more on my desk to sleep without fear of repercussions. I will come home after only 7-1/2 hours atSchool and play video games or go hang with my friends all day until it's time to sleep again. I'll let you feed and clean up after me and take care of the messes I leave. Plus, you'll drive around me where I want to go, and I do not even need to pay. And the best part is that I did not even to thank you for all of it. After all, you owe me.
So yeah … I will be the life of the trade with you. Where do I sign up?
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