Memories IV: Favorite Adventures

continuing onward. Oh wow. Favorite memory as a teenager with my friends was probably just riding around that night

getting off work and then riding around into the night I knew that reality was coming fast and that I should enjoy these nights because quite possibly, I might look back and realize they were the best nights of my life.

Now I look back in the work, no question. Just riding around, going to different places. I remember one time we ended up in Ocean City, Maryland, overnight.

Plenty of other times we ended up plenty of other places that I’m not going to get into here. But just riding around my friends into the night. That was a thing. And that was a that was important to me. I don’t know that I can recreate the scene so that anybody could understand because it was different every night that we took to the streets to the roads cruised around. It was different.

So I don’t know that there was an adult that influenced me the most I guess if I had to pick out somebody of the Martin green guidance counselor at Northern York High School is probably the person that influenced me the most just spend a lot of time in that guidance counselor’s office during my parents divorce, basically because there was nobody else so and I mean like lunches and regular sessions and study halls and all of that. Just because I probably was pretty much an at risk teenager and I don’t know that I would have made it if I hadn’t been that office.

So my first job was 16 was boardwalk fries in the Capital City Mall was a little food court. Booth. Arby’s was on one side of us and the deli was on the other side. And there were cute girls that worked at the deli and friends of ours that worked at Arby’s, and it was owned by a woman named Lois Tate and her daughter, Rochelle, Richard worked there as the manager and assistant.

And, you know, I was 16 years old I mean student wage, which was less than minimum wage, but I worked hard and I took every shift I could get my sneakers turned black, my jeans turned black, my shirts turn black. They was just basically the grease pit. I remember quitting once and coming back I remember being assistant manager at one point or second assistant, I can’t remember which. And then I remember finally lifting up the things slapping that down the little counter in the middle that you lifted to go in and said I quit.

But yeah, that was my first small job. I spent my first paycheck on a Star Trek model kit. My first paycheck was a whopping $27 So that was a that was boardwalk fries thing I must have been there for two or three years.

So I went initially to Harrisburg Area Community College, from 1994 ish to the year 2000. It was General Studies or pre teaching or something I switched my major a few times. I lived at home at the time at home like in my apartment not at home at home with mom and dad.

But I didn’t go away because it was Community College. And I took courses I drank Zima to make it through courses a lot of it was human services, social science. My final major was social services. You had to work a practicum which was basically an internship working for free. I could not afford to do that and pay the rent. So I dropped out of school.

I went back in 2014 Because by then you could do school online. So I re enrolled in Harrisburg area community college by online, switched my major to General Studies, transferred to Penn State changed again to integrate social science and finally finished so that was that was a big deal.

You know I started when I graduated high school and I finished after I was a parent so that was that was a big deal. That was a big deal and I got in a way so she’s degree and I got my bachelor’s degree so social integrate social science is basically a marketing type of degree where you can look at numbers and statistics and human behavior and all that fun stuff. You can also do social, social work in areas where they can’t get like royal licensed social workers.

So word association exercise. I heard the word failure. Generally speaking, I just think of life. I don’t know that I’ve succeeded at the basic thing of starting a family getting married, all of that stuff. So I think in that regard, yeah, I have epically failed in that.

I’ve chosen a different path of it just being me, my daughter I adopted and that’s life but in terms of actually, you know, not being single getting married, actually adapting to living with somebody else. Yeah, no, haven’t succeeded. So that’s definite failure.

The most important person I met in college or my post high school life that will probably be I know the time period that this is looking at. It’s when you got out of high school or college. So I’m trying to think in terms of of that era.

It would probably be a woman named Tina or che I babysat for her. She was my trainer at Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance agency. She had a friend named Greta, but we all hung out at her house. drank a lot used to go over watch games, because Central Pennsylvania frowns backer club, all kinds of things, but Tina knew everything. Tina was cool. Tina knew it knew everything.

And I don’t think she was that much older than us. But yeah, she was probably the most influential person. I remember driving your Ford Mustang around. That was fun. But yeah, I babysat her kids and stuff like that. But being over her house was always close. There’s always something going on. And she had a crazy ex husband to name crack. So that always made things interesting.

So my major in college, pre teaching social services slash Human Services, General Studies and integrate social science. Yeah, it changed a lot. It changed mainly on how many credits Could I get? And how do I not lose credits in terms of transfer? That was pretty much it.

So as young adult, what in my teens and early 20s stressed me out the most and what did I do in my late teens and 20s to relax and release it? Well, that’s easy. The second one is drink. There’s no question it was drinking. I drank like a fountain. It wasn’t even funny and I smoked like a chimney pack and a half kaldewei killers a day.

Things that stress me out the most for probably work, work and work. My greatest strength as a teenager was working but my greatest stress was also work. Because my life was the work. So something happened during work. There wasn’t anything to bounce it out. And it was probably the end of the world.

I remember when I worked at sheets, number 112 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I worked with a bunch of the people in the inner city and that freaked me out that stressed me out. I got very angry with those people. And it took me a little bit to come to terms with all of that.

I worked doubles. I worked in the inner city overnight, then went to the suburbs during the day. And I had a nine times easier time in the suburbs with the white people than I did in the inner city with the black people. But there was one girl that changed that her name was chip on the springs. She was very kind to me and helped open my eyes and helped me get through that time.

So yeah, college age was when I dated. Her name was Jennifer. There was really only one. There was another girl that shall remain nameless. At a place that I worked and we were close. We weren’t dating, but I’m sure that the person that she was dating thought that I was dating her or liked her or something.

But yeah, I told the story in a different session about Jennifer the girl I met at the Summer Festival. And that was my romantic life during the college years.

What memory comes to mind when you hear the word rejection? Well, nearly everything. The people that asked out that shot me down you know, especially again, this is the young adult HSA the door NASA shut me down was definitely was aware of rejection but I can also go back and say being an adoptee set rejection early and obviously being a person of color in the white community was rejection but this is dealing mainly with the young adult years, the college years and definitely was the asking out and getting turned out down thing

what obstacles they encounter in college, or right after in high school and how to overcome them. Well, math. It all comes down to math. There is no question and I don’t think I ever came overcame that because I didn’t ended up taking remedial math. So so that is that is how that works.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai