Childhood Fondation

 

This is the remodeled version of the house I grew up in. This remodel was done after my family moved out of our childhood home. The house originally had two-toned paneling. The top being a dirty gray color and the bottom being a scary version of the 70's dull yellow. Here is a photo of what the paneling looked like before it got completely remodeled...

 

This was the house that became our childhood home the summer of 1992 when we moved in. When we moved into this house Miranda was 8, I was 6 and Heather was 2. We literally walked into a 70's house. I kid you not old wood floored living room, ugly kitchen tile floors, old cabinets as our house was over 100 years old. Each of our bedrooms had different 70's color carpeting. Heather's room had some long, dark brown carpeting, my room had the orange citrus shag carpeting that reminded me of orange vomit. Miranda's room had like baby blue shag carpeting. Our hallway came complete with ugly, worn out green carpeting that reminded me of a hospital lobby carpet, only spinach green.

This house would not be the quote "ideal" house but for my parents it was an affordable 4 bedroom house that was big enough for our family. My sister's and I were happy with the house because before then we were living with my grandparents while my parents closed on this house and before then we were living in apartments with not nearly enough room to run and play; not to mention that we did not have our own space that we could just be alone or with friends if we chose to do so. When I had the incident of bullying on the school bus with Tommy, this was the house I ran home to which was two blocks from where my bus would drop me off...In the top photo of the house, the window on the top left (when looking at the photo) was my bedroom window. That was my small, yet personal sanctuary from the world around me. I spent many days in my bedroom and at times my family would even forget that I was home after I was old enough to drive and had a car...

The next memory of bullying came from kids at school who knew the house that we had lived in and knew that most of the time the house was not spotless but "messy". My mom was and still is a pack rat and the house was always cluttered with junk and things that should have been thrown away a long time ago. When any of us kids had friends come over, we usually brought them up to our rooms because it was quite embarrassing to have such a cluttered and messy house all of the time. My sisters and I did do chores but when they both started to not do theirs when they got older, it fell on me to do my chores as the girls didn't really care to do them or care to get grounded. It was far too much for my mom to do on her own or myself to do and not have my sisters helping. The only time they did house work on any sort of regular basis is when they wanted something whether it was money, a friend to stay the night or to go somewhere...Growing up we also had parents who smoked. As far as I know, my parents have smoked since before we were all born. I later in my teen years started smoking as my sisters did too, but growing up it was also kind of embarrassing having a house that reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Aside from my one childhood best friend that I met at Seberger Park which was a local park about 3 blocks from our house, I was quite embarrassed to have friends come over to our house...

As a result, I attempted to bring a few friends that I did manage to make from school over to play a few times but they were shocked at the messiness of the house as well as the stagnant smoke smell. It grossed me out too and made me feel so bad because I always smelled bad growing up. I would get teased by kids at school because I would always stink like smoke and they would tell me that I smelled of rotten food and that I needed to take a bath. No matter how much I bathed, I could not get the smell of smoke and mustiness out of my clothing. I began bathing each night and soon I was showering each morning instead of before I went to bed. Kids teased me a lot about those types of things, things like the smoke smell which was beyond my control. I would spend countless hours cleaning the house as much as I could as a kid when I had a new friend from school who was going to come over to play with me.

There was this one girl I met in the 5th grade. Her name was Abby. She was like me in a lot of ways and was not the most popular girl in school and some people teased her because she was an early developer. Her body hit puberty early and she developed breasts before most of the girls our age were out of our training bras. :) Those were the days of luxury and no bras... :)

Anyways, I invited Abby over to hang out after school one day of our 5th grade year and her mom finally said yes to her coming over after we had asked her for quite some time...We hung out and just played games, played outside and everything that 5th grade girls do...A few hours passed and Abby's mom came to pick her up. Abby's mom was shocked when she entered our house and saw that it was so cluttered with stuff but mainly she was disgusted at how stagnant the smell of smoke was. My parents smoked in their house, always had done that, so naturally, the house would smell of smoke...But anyways, Abby's mom made some comment about the smell of smoke and then Abby left with her mom. We continued to hang out at school and after a few weeks, Abby wanted to come over again to play. Her mom told both of us that she would not allow Abby to be friends with me anymore and that she could not come over anymore because she did not like her daughter coming home smelling of smoke...I did not understand why we could not be friends as growing up in that environment, I was far used to the smell of the smoke and really didn't notice it anymore other than when someone was actually smoking. I also didn't understand why we could not be friends because of something I had no control over...I was a kid, I didn't smoke, I was not a trouble maker, I was a good kid and really loved school...But because of a choice my parents made, I ended up losing a childhood friend. Abby and I still spoke at school but soon after her mom forbid us to see each other or be friends, we soon stopped speaking completely and I once again went back into my shell of a person with my one childhood friend who came over all the time. This friend's parents didn't mind or notice the smoke because they were smokers themselves...For years I was so bothered by what Abby's mom said and did to dissolve our friendship that I was even more scared to make friends and I never wanted to invite them over either...I also developed this issue of going to friends' houses or spending the night because I felt every one of my friends' parents would tell their kids they could not play with me or be friends with me because I smelled of smoke and because my parents smoked...This fear developed into this huge issue I had for years where I would refuse to spend the night anywhere away from home, not even stay over at my cousins house for the fear of being away from my family...The only place I would be willing to stay was at my grandparents house because I knew I would have fun there and they paid attention to me a lot which was also something I struggled with was finding my place within my family and feeling wanted and accepted by my family...That's a whole other issue not related to bullying at this time, however, I may share bits of that in the future if it ties into an experience of bullying I had went through...

I want parents and adults to know that each choice you make when you have kids not only affects their lives in the moment but also their lives in the future. Please do not ever try to get in the way of a good friendship that your child has with someone. If it is a good friendship and your child is happy and having fun, why would you want to take that away from them? It not only hurts your child but it can cause other issues of doubt and insecurity in the future. Try to preserve those friendships because they are so hard to find good friendships but when you do or your kids do, it can and does mean the world to them. Of course there has to be limits if you feel uncomfortable with something, but then there are alternate ways to ensure your child is not exposed to that...You can allow your child to play with their friend but only at your house and not at theirs so you can monitor what goes on...But please NEVER, EVER take a friendship away from your child if that friend is a good friend. You never know what kind of affects it could have on your child or the friend later on in life. Please also don't speak negatively about anyone in front of your children. Not only is it wrong to do that, but it does get repeated and can be very hurtful to the person hearing it about them. If you feel the need to speak about it, please do so after children go to bed or when children are no where around to hear your thoughts and opinions. Words are the most powerful weapon and they can hurt worse than the sharpest object you could harm someone with...Train your tongue to not speak hate/hostility; instead train your tongue to speak life, value and praise into the lives of the children around you. :)