Adam Wood

    As far back as I can remember, I’ve never been deprived of anything. Sure, as a kid, I would want a new bike, or the most up-to-date video game, but, as far as necessities go, I’ve always had a shirt on my back and a hop in my step.
    Attending a private grammar school didn’t help my understanding of class, and I didn’t truly appreciate my family’s well-being until after high school. But by then, the comfortable middle class standing that we had always held was beginning to slip. My Grandpa, who is my father figure, is 71 years old. He works two jobs while my Grandma sews crafts and sells them at fairs. This is how it has always been, but I didn’t understand how tight money really was until I started helping to pay the bills.
    Living with my grandparents initially strikes people as odd, but it helped shape me into the person that I am. My Grandpa taught me things the way he learned them 60 years ago, indeed, when things were taught differently. I learned the value of a dollar from him, and I learned that a man shows his true character in the things he does when he is alone. He jokes that I’ll never have kids because he didn’t teach me how sex works.
    It is this environment, a white, middle class neighborhood and lessons of tolerance and acceptance straight out of the 1940s that has helped shape my outlook on life and society.
    High school was a big experience for me. Coming from a private grammar school, where I shared a classroom with the same 27 kids for eight years, I wasn’t used to being around such a variety of people. Regrettably, my first real interaction with someone of another race wasn’t till high school, but I feel that I was prepared for it by the lessons that my Grandpa taught me. I started to meet people who weren’t white middle class like me, and that helped not only to broaden my horizons, but also to appreciate my standing in society.
    When I think about where I’ve been and where I’m going, I get scared. With every day that passes, I feel like I’m being drawn out of a comfort zone and I get worried that I’ll fall into obscurity. I feel reassurance, though, when I draw on those lessons from the ‘40s, back from a time when class meant something different. I think if these lessons, these particles of wisdom from an era long past, are able to transcend time and class, then why can’t I?