Painting everyone with the same brush
I was extremely fortunate in being raised in a military family and having parents who cared about education. I grew up with a vocabulary that would rival most privileged, wealthy kids who are the same as age me. No silver spoon in this mouth. I can talk my way in to or out of most things and my brother and my sister are the same. I have relatives who have doctoral degrees, have made money hand over fist, have raised bright and beautiful children, who all came from the same place.
I am one of the first ones to tell people to let me live my own life. Let me make my own decisions. Let me succeed or fail on my own. I come by this naturally.
My grandparents on my father's side came to central Florida in the mid-thirties from LA, lower Alabama. My grandfather was 16 when he married my grandmother who was 14. He was a dirt farmer until they began build Ft. Rucker. He got a paying job doing construction and once he learned a trade, he loaded up my grandmother and 4 kids and came to Florida.
My grandfather worked union construction the rest of his life. My grandmother got a job in a canning plant, had a treadle sewing machine and could make anything, canned vegetables which she went out in the fields to pick to help feed them all year. They raised 6 children. Those children went on to become ministers, teachers.career mlitary, law enforcement. In other words, become productive members of society and those children had children who are also productive members of society.
Someone I know posted a very negative comment about her neighbor riding a lawnmower with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, wearing an undershirt. All the comments on the post were negative.
So I am going to say this: I am a redneck. I come from a long line of rednecks who wore undershirts, smoking cigarettes while mowing their lawn. My grandfather owned and raised hunting dogs, many who came from animal control agencies and had guns and hunted. His dogs were kept in a pen away from the house and he spent hours sitting out there with his dogs, smoking a cigarette and talking to them. It was our great delight as children when we got to ride on the tailgate of his truck down to the dog pen to feed his hounds. Was he a bad man because he owned guns and had hunting dogs? He voted straight Democratic because he said the Republicans never watched out for the little guy. He was not an educated man in the sense of graduating high school. He could read and write but left school to work on the farm.
He wore undershirts and striped overalls, carried a western paperback in his pocket at all times and would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. Does this make it better?
So my friends who are in rescue or those who disparage people for things they couldn't possibly understand; those who talk bad about others simply because you do not subscribe to how they live; my respect for you just went down several pegs.
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