Hanging Out

A favorite pasttime in my neighborhood was "hanging out". This meant being anywhere with nothing to do. We would hang out at the gas station and giggle over the mechanic's cute butt. We would hang out on a porch and stare at the bus people. We would hang out at the used car lot and pretend to be bus people ourselves, but the best place I ever found to hang out was a house that was being renovated. Whoever was fixing the place up never locked the door, so at 3 in the afternoon, I'd meet my "boyfriend" there and we'd sit and talk about growing up. I was maybe 10 years old, so we never kissed or held hands, we would just talk.

It was so wonderful to sit on a new hardwood floor, surrounded by sawdust and fresh plaster, talking about things you could never say outside in the real world. We'd say things like, "When I grow up, I want to go to college and be a -insert white collar job here-." I used my boyfriend to work out an entire business plan, that would culminate in me owning a horse ranch. He used me to work out a plausible way to get a scholarship and become a doctor.

Let me explain why we couldn't express those kinds of dreams outside of our safe house, and why a scholarship was every child's hope.
Poor people don't get student loans. Period. (yes, I know this is a falsehood, and I dare you to walk into any inner city neighborhood and ask a kid how you get to college.) Any suggestion of college within hearing range of an adult always yeilded the same results-
Me: "I'm smart, and I'm going to college!"
Adult: "Really? How do you plan on getting there?"
Like it's some far off country surrounded by man eating wildebeasts, not some achievable goal
Me: "Well..."
Adult: "Because let me tell you something, little missy, We don't go to college."
Me: "But"
Adult: "College is for people with money. Do you have money? Do you have the kind of money it takes? You think you can just get a loan? Like for a car? Well you Can't! Give it up kiddo, it ain't gonna happen. Ain't nobody in his right mind gonna give you any cash to go to college, no matter how smart you think you are. You ain't good enough, you got nothin' they want, and they ain't gonna invest in you."

If I was lucky, the adult in question had vented enough, and would shut up. If I was unlucky, they would keep going until I would finally cry. I hated crying in front of adults, especially because tears would usually bring a look of contrition to their face and they'd say, "Well, you might get a scholarship. But you're white, so don't count on it."

My mother never ranted at us that way. When we brought up college to her, she would sigh and say, "Well, we'll just have to work extra hard on getting you a scholarship. You can do it, you're both smart. God blessed you with a good head on your shoulders, it's up to you to use it."
Sometimes we'd have to hear about how she gave up her scholarship so she could get a job, and help put her brothers and sisters through school. Sometimes she'd talk about how when dad left, he took our college money. That one always gave me an empty pain in my chest.

Once upon a time, I had a dad and a house, and my own back yard where we grew vegetables. I was 5. We would get a dollar a week for the chores we did, and half would go into our college fund. We'd go to the bank and put 2 quarters every week into a book with a chipmunk on it, and mom would match it. We also put away half of any other money we received. This meant birthdays, Christmas, Easter and the kindness of strangers sent us to the bank to stash some cash for college.
In the 2 and a half years we lived there, we put away better than $700. When dad left, he emptied our college fund. I didn't know about it until I told mom to take some of my college money to pay the bills. That's when she told me we didn't have a penny for schooling, because our bastard father had taken it all. I felt like I had been kicked in the stomache. All that money... all that saving instead of buying toys or candy... gone? I didn't want to believe her. Gone??
What kind of person takes college money? What kind of person thinks it's ok to steal a child's hope for her future? I spent days wandering around feeling cheated, for once seeing the world as an ugly place where nothing is safe. It was just... gone. Poof! Sorry, start over. What the hell?

How do you resolve "your dad just couldn't handle the responsability" with "he took everything"? There is no resolution, you just have to suck it up and move on, which is what I did.

A few years later, when mom broached the idea of filing for divorce, my sister and I said in unison, "Good. It's about time."

We did both eventually go to college. I went for art, and J became a physician's assistant. (the kind of PA that requires residencies, not the thing you can earn at a tech school.) She got student loans and a scholarship, I paid out of pocket and took only the classes I wanted. I'm terribly proud of my sister.