The media, I think, has confused all of us to what reality is. Real life isn't pleasant. Everyone knows that. So after an unpleasant day of life, why would you want to watch someone else have a bad day? You don't. You want to watch "How Life Should Be If We Lived In Candy Land." TV shows are seriously sugar-coated. I think people are losing sight of what is real.
Let's start with teen's television shows. Most of the main character's problems consist of not getting a cell phone, getting grounded, or embarrassing themselves. Those are problems, but to most of us, they are very small in reality. People who live these suburban-American-dream lives are blocking out what is going on all around them. The mother cleans the house, and bakes cookies. The kids have little problems like not being able to go to the mall that day. The father works an eight hour day and comes home happy. Doesn't that sound like a nice life to live? Well too bad, because life isn't like that. Most of us live much worst lives. The mom has to work three jobs, paycheck to paycheck, just to pay the bills. If there is a father, he comes home drunk and mad. The kids either aren't home, trying to get away from their lives, or hiding in their room. I'm not accusing your families of doing this, but this is how some people live.
My thirteen years of living haven't been very good either. That doesn't mean I can't make life better for myself in the future. In my kindergarten years, we lived in my uncle's house, too poor to buy our own. Then we rented our own house and lived in it for about one year before we got kicked out for not having the rent money. We camped at the beach in a motor home for a few weeks. We finally found a town with cheap property up in northern California. We drove up all the way from Orange County to Trinity County in that old motor home. We went from poor suburbans to even poorer hillbillies. Our little house had one room, one bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a living room. My sister and I shared the room, and my parents slept in the living room. There was no washer or dryer so we hand washed our clothes. We had a big tub that we would fill with water and soap and we would wash. After we rinsed we would hang our clothes up on the clothesline. We also had a barn on our property which we fixed into our new house a few years later. My dad has been unable to work since his heart attack he had when I was two. My mom had to do most of the working. Now, life is much better. The barn is fixed to look like a house (even though the walls aren't painted). I have the whole upstairs of the barn as my room. The barn has two bathrooms, my bedroom, my parents' bedroom, kitchen, and living room. My dad has finally started getting his social security money. Now, my mom only has to work one job.
I've never lived in big city before. I can't relate to the big crime, violence, or drugs, that they have in big cities, but I can relate to life. Even though I live in a small town, that doesn't mean there aren't drugs or crime here. A lot of the kids and their parents who live here smoke pot. I know that kids as young as seventh graders smoke pot. We have a pregnant fifteen year old who is due in a month. Kids here lose their homework because the only place to put their work at home is on their bedroom floor. Sometimes a teacher doesn't understand why you're failing. That teacher doesn't know that you got kicked out of your house last night because you step mom was drunk.
This is what you see when watch The Disney Channel. Here's an example from a "Hannah Montana" episode: Hannah get's mad because she is always picked last in gym. She sulks. Now here's reality: There's a lanky boy named John who's in the eighth grade. He's a social outcast. The one unlucky kid who got chosen for this horrible fate. He has no friends. Everyday he gets slammed into lockers, the bruises getting blacker and blacker. He fails gym because he can't go into the locker room without getting a black eye. Kids tell him he should just go kill himself. He hangs himself because he'd rather be dead than go to school for another day.
All of the mothers who are able to stay home and clean the house are lucky. Some of them are just so blind. When they see something on the news that bothers them they probably say something like, "Oh, that's not good." Then they turn off the TV and entertain their families with a new desert they made while watching Martha Stewart. They think they know what's happening and believe they are doing everything they can to save the world. The donate cans of food and give away old clothes. They believe, or want to believe, those are the only problems.
People need to stop pretending all of this isn't happening. We can't keep trying to be like someone on TV. We have problems that we can't help or stop. We can't just learn a "life lesson" everyday to solve all our problems. We aren't characters. We need to stop hiding from reality. We need to live our own lives.
I know how hard living is. I know that a lot of people have it way worse than I did. I also know that some of you had it much better. The scary thing is we don't even know the worst of it.
