Jeremy Gable

   I was born into hardship, not poverty, but work. The working class.  I still cannot distinguish between the working class and the lower-middle class, but I know that during my childhood my mom struggled everyday to put food in my mouth and hers, so I would consider us to have been in the working class. My mom was a single mother who has endured many hardships just to stay in the working class. We stayed in a rugged apartment on a rugged block with no luxury in sight. A better life was never known to me and I had no aspiration for it.
   It was when my mom met my step-father that things became a little less stagnant. We didn't move up on the echelon of class, just a different apartment, in with my step-father who was already living there alone. We were all in the same predicament, no car, no nice house. I had a baby sister within a year and it took two years after that for my mom and step-father to get married, which was the first step to moving up in class. On average, we moved once a year, apartment to apartment. Five years and five rugged apartments later, we moved into our first house, which was the next step to moving up in class. Within six months I had another sister and life was different.
   My real father was never there for me as a child. He knew that with me being born it would interfere with his plans. I would describe my real father's life and family as middle class, you know, Christmas grab-bags with shiny gold and green gift wrap with huge lace bows and extravagant “vow renewal” weddings with champagne dresses and sky blue silk vests. My family is lower-middle class, which poses tension between the two families. Class doesn't necessarily play a big part in my life as it does the way I view my surroundings and why people do and act the way that they do. I live in a neighborhood surrounded by the working class, lower-middle class, and not too far from the middle class neighborhoods. This can be a very tricky situation considering that the neighborhood's population is a mixture of people with credit cards and new cars, and people stealing from these types of people.
   Even though I can never forget where I've come from, I can never go back to where I was and I feel strongly that higher education is the next step to moving up further in class. The things that my family possesses do not determine our class, but the amount of work we have to put in to get it is the determining factor. This is what moves me and what influences my attitude and what I am today.