Having no Mom and no Dad did present some disadvantages, but if you look at it differently you can see some of the disadvantages can be turned into advantages. Let me explain how one of them turned out for me. Since I was living with an alcoholic just out of prison we were very poor, so poor that we had no electricity or gas, luckily the apartment was centrally heated with steam heat from radiators. Since we had no electricity there was no TV or radio, so what's a kid to do? Read, read by kerosene lamps. Of course we didn't have any money to buy and books, but I did earn enough doing choirs for neighbors to buy comic books. How can reading comic books turn into an advantage? It doesn't really matter what you read, comic books help you develop your reading skills, they also require that you interpret the visual images along with the narrative. So what did I gain? I had one of the highest reading scores through out grammar school. That's just one example of turning a disadvantages into an advantage. What in your life did you change to turn a disadvantage into an advantage?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Employment

I went to grammar school PS123, junior high school PS162, George Westinghouse Vocational and Technical high school, and finally to RCA Institutes. At George Westinghouse I majored in electrical installation. My first job was at some factory where they expected you to work on live wires, something told me that it was too dangerous, so I quit after two days. My next job was installing heating controls for an electrical contractor. I would install Honeywell heating controls for boilers shortly after they were turned off, and  the sole of my feet got really hot climbing atop of those boilers. The New York the electrical code required rigid conduit made of steel, not those flimsy aluminum pipes or god forbid Roamex. The main problem with rigid conduit is that it is a bitch to bend with a tool known as a hickey, I only weighed 140 pounds, so it was exhausting. I took a test with the New York City Transit Authority (MTA) and passed; I landed a job as an electrical helper. I wor...
Read more

Canarsie

Image
Simon my sister’s uncle also known as "whitey" because he always wore a white T-shirt, and "shimmy" a nick-name he got in prison. Simon liked to go fishing, but like I said that costs money. So, the cheapest way to go fishing was to take a subway and bus and fish off  the Canarsie Pier off of Jamaica bay, Brooklyn, I myself was not fond of fishing off the pier with a cheap fishing pole and some fish scraps, I did however enjoy anytime I could be near the ocean. Off to the left of the pier was a small beach, but adjacent to that was a landfill of compacted trash, it was known as "New York’s dirtiest beach". I really didn’t think about how polluted the water was, so on hot days I went in the water to cool off. Horseshoe crabs use to congregate adjacent to the pier in what looked like mating season. Horseshoe crabs are my opinion quite ugly. So, I use to throw rocks at them trying to crack their shell and kill them. I never succeeded to cracking their s...
Read more

Having a "bill", and John gets shot

Back then I was a kid we did our shopping at the local grocery store. Sure we had super markets like Bohack and A and P, but you only went there if you were going to buy a lot of groceries and that of course meant money. The local market was run by a strong, yet kind gentleman named John, John allowed you to have a "bill", a running tab for items you couldn't pay for at the time, and that was a life saver every month when funds were low. I remember a couple of things I absolutely loved getting at the store, one was ham with mustard on Italian bread with an ice cold bottle of Pepsi, and sour pickles. The pickles were in a big open wine barrel where the pickles floated in a sour liquid along with a fine assortment of flies. Never gave much mind to the flies, never got sick enjoying those pickles. To earn some pocket change I used to go grocery shopping for Mrs. Jennings, she lived in the next building over. One day she gave me her list of groceries to buy and $20. After p...
Read more