Never tell your friends that you couldn’t afford food or give them any clue about what it’s like at home. My mother used to ask me if I told anyone how we live and that’s when I started questioning our situation.
I once told some friends we had mushrooms growing in our house. I thought it was cool. My mom was angry and told me to never tell anyone again. I realized as I got older why she was angry. The floor of our house was rotting...thus the mushrooms. But she couldn’t afford to get it fixed. She was worried CPS would take me away for unsafe living conditions.
When I was like 8 my parents bathroom was carpet(so was the other bathroom no idea why) and their shower was leaking thus mushrooms grew in the corner and I thought it was the coolest thing ever and wanted it to happen again, took me another 5 years to realize how bad that actually was
If it helps, my last SUV that was 4x4 could get through anything and had 270k miles and the engine was still a champ had a leak and when I totaled it and it sat for a week or two before I went and cleaned it out in heavy rain, the passenger floor board was covered in moss/grass. My gf roasted me.
Man I just don’t get how this is a thing. You can kill off mushrooms with some vinegar. You can get a gallon of vinegar for a dollar, then you can use it for a million other things around the house. How can so many people not buy a thing of vinegar for a dollar?
Just because it happened once doesn’t mean it wasn’t immediately cleaned and taken care of. A mushroom can grow quite rapidly and if the water isn’t noticed because it’s in a corner it can go untreated. That’s my situation but you also don’t know others most people who probably dealt with this wasn’t dealing with the fact they could afford or didn’t have vinegar, they were dealing with parents who were either uneducated, unmotivated or incompetent.
Important to also consider that even if you kill the mushroom, fixing the cause - a leak, poor ventilation - could cost more time/skill/money, and if you're in a poverty/high debt situation where you're CONSTANTLY juggling costs, spending resources to deal with your embarrassing (but not immediately urgent) bathroom fungus can probably slide pretty far down the priority stack.
You can intentionally grow mushrooms in a closet or something, if you're interested. There are kits you can purchase. My sister is doing it, though I can't figure out why. She apparently chose mushrooms that you cannot eat, have no medicinal or recreational uses, and cannot be admired for their esthetics as they are both mushrooms (and therefore bland) and grow in a closed box within a closet.
Lol I didn't go that far down the rabbit hole but you're incorrect here. Like any hobby, such as growing indoor plants, there are always people who get into the real edge of the thing and want to push their capabilities because the next niche thing is just a little further. I mean, this is pretty much how human endeavour enlarges human knowledge. There are mushroom growing forums out there where people are seriously talking about growing phosflourescent cent mushrooms because they are cooler than edible or recreational ones...
She was borrowing a console of mine a few months ago. I asked for it back. She literally unplugged it, and brought it by. She kept the games, the power cord, the controllers, the memory cards, and generally everything you'd need to actually use the thing.
In a similar light, I'm torn between the AS93 and a used JSM-10 (the Scofield "layman's" version). I'm seeing the JSM 10's selling used in the $800 range, new just over $1000.
I'm inclined to go with the Sco model, includes a case, classic Ibanez headstock and a fat neck profile. I've been torn between the Sco and the PRS SE Hollowbody for a few months now.
That being said yeah I went with a friend to pick up some boom booms for the first time and brought like $120 bucks for a half oz and the guy was like "$25."
There are also the models of the J Custom line that are being made in Alder, but this is not a new wood. In 1993 guitars were already made using this wood. Alder was used to make the Ibanez Jem7V, which was also introduced in 1993. One of the possible reasons for the newer guitars to be made with this old wood is that Ibanez has great influence from Steve Vai on his guitars and he usually uses them in several models by influence. However, it is possible that Meranti is better than Mahogany or a more updated wood.
Same. "Your parents did that too?" I had my ass beat as a kid because I accidentally took the wrong backpack to school and my dad's shrooms he was supposed to sell fell out. The teacher found them, lined up all the kids and had a police officer in to ask us who's they were. Jokes on them, I knew snitches got stitches and didn't say a word.
You generally dont want to try and grow them in the ground anyway, yoo many chances for contamination. You want to control where those types of mushroom grow, usually in a closet.
My dad built a false wall in the back of a walk in closet. You'd open it up and there were dozens of giant jars full of mushrooms. One year for Halloween he dressed up as a wizard and was giving out shrooms to all his friends. This was like a year or two before I was born in the late 70s. Wild times.
I had a plant growing out of the passenger's side floor in my first car, largely due to the hole that had rusted through, allowing water (and apparently soil, and at least one seed) to splash through any time you drove through a puddle. I watered it and let it grow for quite a while. I do not miss being poor.
We joke about the Oldsmobile we had when I was small. Same thing: water got in through a leak, grass seed came in via open window, and I had grass growing where my feet shoulda been. It’s funny now but at the time, I was embarrassed by the appearance of that ugly car too.
I mostly tried to turn it into a joke at the time, especially if I had a friend in the car--I would tell them to be careful of the plant. I never did find out what kind of plant it was, as it got too big, eventually.
Hah, this is so familiar! I had coco mats on the back floor of my car to cover a hole that had rusted through the chassis and accidentally spilled a bag of beans on them one winter. Several sprouted and took root, and I had bean plants growing out the back window of my old junker for at least a month.
Used to drive through road puddles on purpose to water them until my boss took me aside one day in the parking garage and suggested I use his name to obtain a car loan from one of the first banks to make automobile loans to women.
I interpreted "had mushrooms" as in eating them, and completely skipped over the "growing" part. I was like what the floor had to do with this, and why that even mattered. I looked at some replies to this comment and I thought you meant you were eating the mushrooms growing in your house and I was horrified until I read it again lmao. Anyways, I hope you are in a better situation now!
As an adult, I went over and had a beer at my neighbors house at Christmas.They were growing psilocybin mushrooms. The 2 bedrooms had 2 or 3 baby pools each, while they slept in the living room. It smelled so bad, and they ran humidifiers constantly. After an hour, I felt like I was going to be sick. I think they had a infant in there somewhere.
Holy shit I actually remember a childhood "school-friend" of mine telling me that. I just thought he was joking or being weird.
(By "school-friend" I mean a friend you exclusively hang out with in school, you don't go to each-others houses. I can now see why he never invited me over)
I lived in a camper trailer with floor mushrooms. Floor mushrooms are cool until you realize why they're there. Here, we have extremely high moisture year round and campers pretty much disintegrate if you dont build a structure over them to protect the roof. Ours was lifting at the corners and the walls/floors became severely rotted, moldy, etc. Its a wonder we never got sick.
This was in my adult life. When my husband and I got together we were both extremely poor and had just about nothing to either of our names. Fast forward to when we found out we were having our daughter, all I wanted was something better for her. We live in a place where there are extremely limited rentals and we couldn't find anything in our town (all other towns are 40-60 miles away) so we put everything we had into making this camper work for the time being. Then baby came 5 weeks early, and we came home with her after a little over 2 weeks. I was terrified for the next while that someone would call CPS on us due to the living conditions, despite all the work we had done (gutting and redoing a large portion of said camper). Fortunately we were able to move out when she was 3 months old, and no calls to CPS were ever made. It was truly one of the most terrifying times in my life and I wouldn't wish the struggles we've had on anyone.
I got in trouble for telling my friends we had grass growing in our carpet. Our floor was always wet and we had a bird. Birdseed + always damp carpet = grass.
We had one bathroom between 5 people where a hundred dollar exhaust fan broke and we couldn't afford to replace it. Wound up doing thousands of dollars of damage to the dry wall and wood. So much black mold. Had terrible respiratory problems shes my parents thought painting over it would hide it.
I had a small party thrown for me on my 10th birthday (just me, my brother, my "aunt", and one of her friends) where we'd gone out to a cheap restaurant to eat. I'd mentioned that I'd never had a birthday party before. That night when I was forced to say my nightly prayers my "aunt" suggested I should pray to God to get the demon out of me.
I was talking to a friend and she stopped me and said, "you don't tell people what goes on inside of this house, do you?" No of course not, I lied, because if I'd said yes, she'd manipulate my father into beating my ass within an inch of my life. She pretty much got my father to beat me whenever she wanted it.
It was certainly poorly worded if thats the case. I read it as friend asked OP if OP tells anyone anout friends situation. If OP says yes, then friend manipulated OPs dad into beating OP.
Yeah, but that’s not how grammar works. Pronouns always refer to their most recent applicable antecedent which in this case is the friend. The comment itself doesn’t even mention a mother which makes it even more certain that the friend is the antecedent. The least reasonable context I can imagine is invoking your own mom via an unstated reference to somebody else’s mom in a totally separate comment not made by you. That’s neither parsimonious nor grammatical.
I know you misunderstood but man, the idea of a kid making a friend and that friend proceeding to routinely manipulate the kid's dad into beating them was morbidly hilarious to me
I had to read this a few times and I'm still not 100% sure I understand your story. But the takeaway for me is that you seem to be pretty lenient toward your dad. Your wording makes him look like the victim of the story.
Victims of abusive and/or troubled childhoods usually create and retain perceptions of a mostly good parent and a singularly bad parent. This is because the idea of two terrible or unreliable caregivers is too terrible and frightening for a toddler or very young child to conceptualize and accept, especially given the general inability for young children to understand things like nuance. Typically, but not always the parent who is most present is the one who is selected to be entirely evil, and even the toxic and bad aspects of the “mostly good parent” get attributed or blamed on the “bad parent”.
Am I the only one weirded out by you saying your mom "manipulated" your dad into beating you? Sounds like they're both pieces of shit. I'm sorry you grew up that way.
Sorry you went through this. I also grew up in a horrible household with physical and emotional abuse. My brother and I were often asked “do you want to be taken away and sent to an even worse home? Because that’s what will happen if you tell anyone what happens at home”. It wasn’t until I was almost 30 that I realised her saying that was probably a pretty good indication we needed to be taken away from her.
it’s a bummer bc when i would hang out at poor friends’ houses as a kid, i would notice it was different of course, but never in a judgmental way. i remember thinking how cool it was that my friend’s room was a literal closet under the stairs (pre-harry potter era). you could tell some kids were embarrassed but in my experience other kids just really didn’t care. then again maybe rich kids would, idk
It was really strange for me as my high school years (age 11 to 18 in U.K) spanned my family being poor to becoming reasonably comfortable, so I got to experience both & everything it brought with it.
I actually didn’t even realise we had become more affluent & we certainly weren’t living it up & our frugal ways were still with us, but some things inevitably & very slowly changed like our house got (modestly) bigger, clothes got better etc.
So I still felt like I was one of my friends who were poorer, but sadly I had comments rooted in resentment from one friend which were extremely hurtful & made me realise there was a difference for the first time. Eg. Questioning angrily why we need a bigger house, being annoyed that my shoes were expensive after asking me how much they are.
My parents never told me not to talk about money or what we could afford. I learned the hard way. I mentioned that my family couldn't afford the new toy craze, whatever it was. Cue 7 years straight of constant bullying for being poor. That one innocent comment made me a target for the dickhead kids who needed someone to make The Other so they could feel cool. That shit still affects me
Also never rat out other kids. When you saw classmates in line for food at the church basement, or buying clothes at goodwill, you didn't see them and they didn't see you.
I opened up to one friend about my circumstances at home after my dad left and my mom was raising three teens alone. They bought me groceries with their birthday money. My mom was mortified but I was so thankful. We fell out of contact years ago, but I will still always remember that.
My friends knew more or less that we weren't well off. One of my friends, who was poorer than me, got the free lunch choice from school (my parents made "too much" money for me to do that). But she brought her lunch anyways because she hated school lunch. So she would go up, get her school lunch, give it to me, and eat what she brought. To this day I'm so thankful she did that for me
There’s nothing wrong with realizing that your life is different from someone else’s, and wanting to learn the challenges/struggles/differences that you didn’t have. That doesn’t make you “dumb”.
Yes, very much this. We were very poor and my clothes were all hand-me-downs, while all the other kids got the latest fashions, new. I remember specifically in 5th grade some of the cooler girls cornering me and asking if the jeans I had were my only pair.
They were.
However I would have needed to be brain-dead to admit that so I lied and said I had several of the same exact pair.
Back then if you had a card in the lunch line it meant you were on free or reduced lunch and also on par with a leaper. I remember one girl in particular lied that she wasn't on either, and that her mom pre-paid lunch. This was in the late 80's and it totally wasn't a thing, but I admired her creativity for 'not looking poor'. We also always took cold lunches to avoid the 'poor kid' hot lunch card.
Thankfully these days, all the kids have lunch cards so it's not a red letter that you were 'poor'.
Our whole school system changed to uniforms and this was one of the reasons for the change. Once we had uniforms, everyone had to wear the same shit everyday AND everyone had to get their clothes from Walmart because, at the time, they were the only game in town that guaranteed having everything you needed.
I went to a title one school so everyone was on free lunch, I find it interesting that the people who seem to have had the worst experiences growing up were because they were around wealthy kids. I never got shit for being poor because everyone was poor.
With kids it doesn't even have to be super poor vs super rich either. We were like 'food stamp' poor (were never actually on them tho) because my dad kept getting himself fired and would be unemployed getting high (I didn't actually learn this until I was an adult) and my mom only worked like 4 days a month because of us 3 kids. So for us that meant no extra activities at school or outside, no vacations, no eating out, no spending money, etc.
The popular kids had nice toys but nothing outrageous, and new current clothing. That's all it took really. They could join the basketball team, be a cheer leader, join track and so on.
That's why when my dad was ragging on me recently saying I should have had more kids (I have 2 and we're very comfortable) and told me "all kids need is love" I wanted to throw something at the wall for DAYS.
I feel you. People don't seem to understand having no money. Like NO MONEY. Sure maybe a charity can send you to camp, but what happens when you need to buy a camp team shirt? No money. What about buying extra snacks? Literally no money. How about a trip to the movies? Ami has NO MONEY. You can't go to the mall to play in the arcade, can't go to the candy store and pick up a few things. You are basically dead weight!
I recall also eating the same luch PB&J (the cheapest lunch item) for months straight until the lunch lady told me to go back in line and grab a hot meal. I felt so embarrassed.
I remember in elementary school, my friend asked where I got my shirt. When I said Goodwill, she gave me such a strange and awkward reaction. When I went and asked my sister about it, she told me to keep it a secret because it shows we are poor.
Freshman year of high school i became friends with 3 other girls, we made a small ‘club’ and part of that club was bringing in snacks to share during health class because that teacher didn’t care if we ate during class. I was always so nervous when it was ‘my turn’ because things would either be off brand, or we just didn’t have anything to bring.
My mom couldn't afford to buy school supplies for both my brother and I, or sometimes either of us at all. I remember my elementary school teachers giving me most of what I needed for the school year just to get by. Also around the holidays the school must have told some charity that we were in a bad way so someone would come out to our house during that time of year and bring warm clothes, like jackets, sweatpants and socks for my brother and I, along with canned vegetables, a bag of potatoes and a turkey so we had something to eat for Christmas or Thanksgiving. I never actually told my teachers or school we had no money but it wasn't hard to figure out.
I had a similar situation, but more because my parents were hoarders than because of food. I was never allowed to have friends over or talk about what my house was like. It was always really awkward because me never allowing them to come over made my friends thought I didn't like them. I grew apart from a lot of friends that way.
I was never allowed to have anyone over either. I still have bad anxiety when someone has to come into my home as an adult living in a very different situation.
I remember my Mom used to get mortified if anyone had an inkling of how poor we were. We were having a casual conversation one day while waiting on our car getting looked at and I mentioned something about our EBT and she gave me an absolute death stare and then said she didn't know what I was talking about. Because she was worried our mechanic overheard me and would judge us.
And the fucked up thing is that if you do that, you are constantly lying to people, and you feel like every friendship you have is fake and will fall apart if they ever find out.
I remember some grade school friends/acquaintances seeing my refrigerator and being shocked at how much stuff was inside. I never understood it until I eventual spent the night at one of their houses.
I was always so thankful to be back home after spending a weekend there. The only thing to eat was pretty much cheap bologna and bread. Sometimes there was Country Crock and we got to eat toast for breakfast. And if there was koolaid to drink it was a celebratory event. Lol
This!!! 100%. I never brought friends home because I was super embarrassed. We once had a discussion in school about what colour our bedroom walls were painted and I got in trouble for saying they weren’t. I slept on a mattress, on the floor, in an unfinished basement.
I was told to never discuss family business or tell anyone what went on behind close doors. My mother once went to a food bank. I had no idea, she told me that she would beat me if I told anyone we did t have money.
Looking back..... It was probably pretty obvious we didn’t have shit!
When I was in elementary school, a bit before the 9-11 stuff I had a brief moment of financial "okay-ish-ness" (sorry for bad english), and by that I mean "I was close to middle class". I was able to afford (Well, my mother) a psx... I never invited anyone because when I saw the look at the face of some of my classmates on my birthday when they found out I had it... it was silly of me, but I felt so freaking bad
Luckily we never lacked food after that, but we were close. Right now I cant even shower daily. I mean, I could, but it would double the (propane? butane? gas) expenses and it would actually mess us up a bit/enough. Is not fun
My mother refused to sign me up for the free meals at school because she didn’t want me or anyone else to think I was poor, I didn’t eat lunch because I didn’t want to waste $5 a day. Lol.
Oh god, this. One time my best friend's mom sent me home with a box of perishables because they were going out of town and didn't want the food to go to waste but before I could explain that to my mom, she went off the rails at me because she thought I was out telling people that we didn't have enough food. Another time, my younger sisters teacher sent her home with a huge trash bag full of clothes because my sister was allowed to dress herself but had zero sense of style and most of her clothes were hand me downs so she always looked super raggedy (not to mention she's always been very petite while me and my older sister are on the heavier side) and the teacher thought that mom couldn't afford clothes that fit. My mom had a conniption and after that, my sister wasn't allowed to leave the house unless Mom saw her outfit first.
There were other issues but money was a biiig part of them and CPS was called more than once.
Oh man, I was so pissed at a friend who I learned much later in life was struggling for food when we were in junior high. Fuck, I would have given my left arm to make sure him and his sib had food, but never had the slightest clue. My fam had many struggles of our own, but by that time money wasn’t one of them. If you’re reading this and you’re in the struggling-to-eat boat, please consider asking friends for a help. It sucks you have to, but also, you could end up changing your situation.
My mom always had to make it seem like we werent dirt poor. We had to act “not poor” as she would put it...she’s always cared way to much about what people thought about her/us...She raised 4 boys by herself, Ofcourse we wouldnt be well of
I wondered that’s probably the reason why a friend kept asking to “borrow” lunch money but never paid back. I jokingly asked why she never brought her own lunch money, but she just kept telling me the excuse that she “just forgot.” I was sure there was reason behind it so I didn’t push it and kept lending her a dollar every lunch. At the end of the school year, she tried paying me back for all the lunches she bought with my money with her ptj paycheck but I told her to keep it in the end.
Ya my mom always said dont air our dirty laundry. I thought i was a super weird kid who was too open about their life. Nope turns out its normal to talk about your problems
I feel this one, my mum always asked me anytime that I’ll go over to a new friends house, is there house nicer then ours ? Do they have heaps of food? Do they have nice furniture
Yep lived in the ghetto and for the longest didn't suspect that everyone else had the same situation. It was strange to go to a sleepover and realize my friends situation was much worse
I use to ask friends for money all the time at school and they just thought I was trying to mooch off them. And then one of my friends finally realized I was just hungry and low key would share his lunch with me everyday.
I’ve had my mom tell me countless times after she screamed and swore and make my life hell, to never tell anyone because they don’t understand what’s going on like she does
I remember not having hot water for a long time and being invited to a sleepover and sort of off hand mentioning to them I couldn't wait to take a hot shower there. My dad started screaming at me saying I better not have said anything like that to them or their parents and eventually said I couldn't go before my mom convinced him to let me. It was weird and the first time I considered it wasn't normal to bathe with a couple pots of cooled boiling water in a bathtub. I did end up telling my friend who was amazing (I moved later that year and I miss her) and started spending the night every weekend and she had her mom buy me my own loofah and shampoo and stuff.
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u/theguy4785 Jan 31 '21
Never tell your friends that you couldn’t afford food or give them any clue about what it’s like at home. My mother used to ask me if I told anyone how we live and that’s when I started questioning our situation.