By Elliott Doomes, February 6, 2020 — I guess most people who live in these high-rise projects are making the best of a bad situation. They have a shelter and a place to sleep but that’s it. I’ve seen parents have kids in the projects and those kids grow up in the projects and so on and so forth. The job market is not conducive to helping these people get out and if the kid’s lucky enough to live in a two-person household then both parents are working. It feels even worse than when I was growing up.
My education started even before I was even in school. In [the] house, there was the golden rule, “Do not lie, do not steal, do not kill.” But on the street, it was, “Do it to them before they do it to you. They hit you, you hit back harder.” If we broke one of these rules, corporal punishment was induced. We were taught to respect our elders. It was always “Yes, ma’am,” and “No sir.” And that what we were judged by when it came to our elders. But among ourselves as young people, anything goes.
My mother and father both worked, I hardly ever had a conversation with my dad. I remember him coming home from work tired out from a hard day. By the time he got himself washed and ready for dinner he had a few minutes with my mother, he ate and went straight to bed because he was tired from his day. So he never had time to really discipline me. That was mostly done by my older brother who I always thought hated me. I really did because he was a harsh taskmaster. My brother used to whoop my butt if I did something wrong or disrespected the elderly. And I couldn’t lie because everybody [knew] everybody. I thought that it was so hard growing up when I was young. My brother was always like a shadow. He always told me where I could go, how late I could stay out, [and] when to come home for bed. He always knew when I was about to do something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. He’d always go, “What you doing? Get your ass out of there.”
And only now do I realize that he was trying to keep me from making the mistakes he made. I realize now that the things he taught me and the values that I learned from my mother are the ones that I hold most dear today.