I came up from poverty and its a trap. I grew up in a trailer park with parents that didn't care how well I did in school, who I hung out with, what I did away from home, where I was most of the time or when I came back. They treated me like a burden not a part of the family. At least not the TV families I saw growing up. Started smoking with the neighbor kids when I was 15, started drinking shortly after. There were no examples to me of life outside of that, I couldn't comprehend what life was outside of being a fuck up. Until I met my uncle. He was a former cop turned SysAdmin @ TCI he introduced me to a side of computers I didn't know existed. I envied what he had, I daresay I coveted his gear and his lab and his stuff. I had been a run-away about 4 or 5 times from the time I was 10 well when I saw that life could be different I decided to run away one last time. I moved in to his house and he taught me a lot of what I learned, not about computers specifically but about learning how to learn. How to teach myself.

I eventually got fed up with him being a bit of a strict hardass about everything. I mean, dude was a cop. Everything I did had to be by the book in terms of life outside the house. I ended up just kind of traveling around the country with my gypsy blooded estranged mother, started a pretty serious drug habit for a bit. But all the time I kept thinking about computer stuff. I kept learning, and eventually I got fed up with my situation. I took a look at my mom's boyfriend and at the time I thought he was pretty cool but one day I was smoking pot with him and I looked at him, like really for the first time. I saw a dude that paid child support to 3 different women, who, if he wasn't dating my mom, basically lived on other peoples couches. He worked at a winery and made less than I made @ McD's. I looked at him and then I asked myself, do want to be this dude when I'm 45? I stopped all drug use except the occasional drink, spent all my free time learning the stuff that my uncle had been trying to teach me and moved back to my old home town. These days I'm actually a Developer which I never thought I could be. I'm content that I made it out, but I know that my case is unusual.

I've driven through that trailer park occasionally and I still see familiar faces more than 20 years out. The truth is we're all poor. If your not making $300k a year you are no better than a generation away from trailer trash. I mean look, here they were, two brothers, grew up in the same house with the same opportunities and I was born to the crappy one. I made it out basically on accident. The difference between being rich and being poor these days is generational, not situational. I disagree with this article, its not that you are broke, it is that you are poor, unless you're filthy stinking rich, you are still one generation away from trailer trash.