My Childhood

My childhood and early experiences differ drastically to that of my counterpart, with my counterpart being my girlfriend Drew Christensen. For starters the areas we ended growing up in are vastly different. I grew up along the west coast in Los Angeles, California, or L.A for short, meanwhile my girlfriend grew up down south in Austin, Texas. I grew up in a lower class neighborhood and surrounding area with the frequent crime, sometimes violent sometimes not, taking place nearby. From drivebys to break ins to street tagging my ridiculously small place in L.A saw it all. People mostly kept to themselves, with neighbors saying hello and hi as they saw each other and have the occasional friendly conversation with one another but that was it. No organized events or having people over or collaborating parties. Yet in Austin my girlfriend grew up in a gated neighborhood, more specifically a house at the end of the cul de sac. She had a fenced in backyard with a hedge, kids would openly play in the streets and bike around in the late hours of the day. Every year they had a fall festival and build arts and crafts, watch movies, play games, eat food, and have a cakewalk all in the cul de sac with the whole neighborhood participating.

Another difference would be the food between the two of us. I grew up with lots of Mexican food growing up. For example I grew up eating chilaquiles, pozole, menudo, al pastor, carne asada, enchiladas, tamales, chile verde, pollo, pico de gallo, ceviche, empanadas, and many others as you can probably imagine. This was common place in my household, and was served more often than not. Of course we’d have other dishes and styles like Italian and different american foods, but Mexican food dominated. My girlfriend had rotisserie chicken, burgers, BLTs, Pastas, Texas toast, Salads, stuff cooked in crock pots. Along with a lot of dining out at places like chili’s, Texas roadhouse, barbecue places, chick fil a, and many more.

The next comparison to be made is schools. I was placed in catholic schools that were co-ed, though my parents had to pay tuition and it seemed counter productive given our current situation the tuition didn’t cost much because of the area the school was located in and my parents wanted me to grow up in the catholic faith. With this came your ordinary everyday schooling along with classes about the Roman Catholic Church and its teachings and attending mass on Fridays as part of the school schedule. For recess we played on a blacktop that served as a parking lot for the church and school as we had no playground. What we did have on that parking lot were basketball hoops attached to walls and games drawn into the ground like hopscotch. We would also have basketballs and dodge balls to bring out to play along with whatever somebody brought to play with, like a football or Pokemon cards for example. As you can imagine my girlfriend had a completely different experience. Her family is non religious so she didn’t have the early life experiences that I had of getting first communion or reconciliation. Which means no catholic school and no regular mass to attend. She went to a nice public school, where the kindergartners had their own tree house and the school had its own dedicated playground and nearby woods to play in that school owned.