Social Classes

Since a young age, it is implemented upon us the separation of people. In childhood, maybe through friend groups, or teams chosen in P.E class, or even by the control parents or guardians play in controlling who you were allowed to be around or associate with. But at such an early age the separations we make are somewhat innocent and are usually based off of more than just what meets the eye considering judgment based off income or their ranking in society, is likely not present in the years of childhood. But as we grow older, and society’s thoughts and rules begin to take over our own, we start to see the world through the idea of social classes. We recognize if someone’s not financial inclined or even stable based off outer appearance or their ability to present themselves to the outside world. Something as simple as clothes or where they may choose to eat all can contribute to this appearance they set for themselves that determines to others what “class” they may fall under.

Growing up in the small town of Dickinson, Texas low income families and so called low class life styles surrounded my upbringing. Though the majority of my town fell into these categories, my family did not. With my dad being President of engineering at Tellepsen Industrial, my family’s income is and always has been much higher than the people I’ve lived among my whole life. Since this was the norm for me I never thought much of it and was always brought up to see everyone as equal despite their outer appearance. It wasn’t until junior high I began to see this rule wasn’t applied to everyone. Though my town is considered low income or low class, we are surrounded by other towns that consist of high income families and much nicer general appearances. In school, we compete with these towns in sports and junior high volleyball was the start to me realizing how low they held us on the social scale. I remember being at a game at Friendswood junior high and hearing a parent say we were “ghetto” or come from nothing but food stamps and welfare. It was like this at many schools we competed against and progressively became known that through high school these “higher held” towns mindset of what we were and who we were as individuals wasn’t going to change, strictly based off of the town we live in.

One thing that was difficult to overcome was the obstacles we had to face due to the fact some of our players didn’t have as much money as those of other schools. The other schools in our district almost always had more than half their teams playing club ball together year round. Club being thousands of dollars, it was unrealistic for us to even imagine having that opportunity. Yes, we might have had more natural born athletes at our school, but we were playing against girls whose parents were paying a fortune to ensure they would be the best. I can only imagine is some of the amazing athletes I was blessed to call my teammates would’ve been given that opportunity, how far they would’ve went with it. College scholarship maybe? A way to pay for a higher education to break the cycle of poverty in that small town. It is just crazy to be that a person’s future can be so effected by the zip code they live under and the opportunities they can be given. Low income means a need for money and a lot of the times that “desperate times call for desperate measures” mindset kicks