I graduated a year early. I was considered very bright. All I wanted was art school. Daddy sent me there. I was less than successful. I did graduate, I learned more than I thought I did, at the time.
I married at 20, had my kids. I do some small potatoes artworks around here. Mostly I am a volunteer and look after my kids, pets, and husband.
If I had been kicked out at 17 or 18, I would’ve went to my older sister. She would look after me today, if I needed it. Possibly an aunt. I have many sibs. If Daddy had booted one of us, we would’ve staged a coup. He stood no chance against 8.
I was also in first semester, university dorm, meal ticket so, paid up until January. Living away from home in a college town had a lot more opportunities, so I probably would’ve dropped out at mid-term, gotten a service job, found someone with an apartment looking for a roommate and lived like that for a while. Funny now that I think of it, I probably would’ve followed the exact same path that I eventually did after I graduated, ie work at an entry level job, save all my money, pay off my student loans and then hitchhike around Europe for a year.
My girlfriend at the time (and wife now, thirty years later) were both in full-time work and had been for a couple of years so I think we’d have just got a flat together and carried on as normal.
I’m not dismissing some of the stories people have been sharing here -I want to go and give some of your former selves a hug- but it looks like in almost every one, people fell back on family, friends, existing money or education. The four things the OP says are not an option in his scenario.
That’s so not my family and so not me it doesn’t make any sense. I was hellbent for college since before my age was in single digits because I wasn’t going anywhere without my books; managed to get grades high enough for any school in the country despite spending the last two years of high school as my family’s primary homemaker, through Mom’s 2-years-long illness and surgery and 1 year of Dad being unemployed and depressed and with two little boys in the house.
But let’s say that somehow my mother manages to kick me out and my father has had a stroke or something and doesn’t stop her. I’d start packing said books, call information and ask to be put through to my father’s sister. If you’re also positing that my father was an only child then I guess you’ll also posit none of his friends or mine would be available. That person would be so different from mine that I can’t make any guesses as to what would she do. Or he.
I don’t think there’s an answer for the scenario, there are far too many variables in each of our own lives for it to apply neatly. All we can offer is anecdotes from real life.
I would hit the streets and start turning tricks.
Basically following in the footsteps of David Blaine, Criss Angel, and Derren Brown.
Kicked out the summer I was 18. My folks moved the day after I graduated HS to a town where I had no ties, no car, no idea where I was and I was expected to get a job ASAP. Very rural place. Unsure how they expected that would work. My BF came to visit. They said if I went out with him, I should just leave. So I did. It had been a really bad couple of months anyway, I was told at one point that if I didn’t tie my little brother’s shoe RIGHT THIS MINUTE, I should just leave. Writing on the wall, so to speak.
I got a job, we got married (lasted 13 yrs., no children, take that “bun in the oven” Mom and Dad), and we managed.
I was already enlisted in the military (reserves) before I turned 18. The first 6 months of training would have taken care of food/housing. After that, I probably would have gotten by on that E-1 reserve paycheck, a fast food job, and a roommate in the middle of nowhere.
I would probably be thinking that active duty would be my ticket out of wage work. My reserve unit would drag its feet and fumble its paperwork until August of 1990 when suddenly there would be a surge of recruitment for my MOS (every MOS, really). I would have done a couple of years in Desert Storm (hell, it might have been Panama if things had been really dire), then finished out the terms of my enlistment, and then gotten back on the college track.
Given my situation and available opportunities, getting kicked out at 18 might have actually been better for me. I would have entered college with the maturity, life experience, and independence to make realistic and appropriate decisions for myself. Not pursuing some flashy, grandiose dream intended to get the most mileage out of Mom & Dad’s hard-earned money.
Yes. I mean I can imagine that if I somehow ended up on my own at 18, I would have worked more hours at my existing part-time job and moved in with a couple of my friends. After all, I managed to pay for my college education with no help from my parents except room and board in their apartment - I should have been able to cover rent and food if I didn’t need to pay tuition. But if it were possible for me to end up on my own, if my grandfather would have allowed my parents to kick me out of their apartment in the house he owned and also not allowed me to stay in his apartment , if none of my many relatives would have taken me in, well, then I probably wouldn’t have been me. I might not have had that job, or any friends with their own apartments or the ability to live within a budget or …
When I was 18 I enlisted in the Navy, so that pretty much answers the question I think.
The other choices seem far worse if I was thrown out. Trying to hold down a couple of part time jobs and sharing rent with a bunch of others is a tough way to start your adult life.
Aside from what Guano said, that’s what the OP said was his scenario.
In the hypothetical he put to the rest of us, the only restriction of help from others is from the parents as I read it.
Spice Weasel, you story is truly inspiring. Sadly it is also, ime, all to common, and less successful than you seem to have been in your life.
Crime is your first choice?
I know what advantages I had. I don’t think it really sank in until social work school. The inner city landscape is bleak relative to what I had growing up. These are kids that have nobody safe to fall back on, whose teachers tell them they’re going to get knocked up anyway so they may as well not even try and who are pressured and threatened into participating in illegal activity from a young age. And at least in part due to the ravages of poverty on the young mind, many of them are not half as competent academically. (I really don’t think of my academic intelligence as anything I earned, it’s just an advantage I had working in my favor.) I had it good, okay. It took me a while to realize that. Urban landscapes are a whole different universe relative to my rural Midwest upbringing. Many kids have nothing. And it frankly enrages me that we accept that as the status quo for them, and then judge them for failing.
My mother raised me to believe I was ugly, stupid and just a complete failure. She told me I had to leave her house at age 16, with only 1 1/2 years of high school finished.
I got married, got hooked on prescription drugs, got divorced, got off drugs, got married, became an alcoholic, got divorced, got straightened out and decided to go it alone for a year at age 26.
I’m still alone, but things are much better now.
This whole thread is pissing me off. I realized when I had my miscarriage, the world is full of parents who don’t deserve to be, pregnant women who don’t want to be, children without homes, and people who would do anything for the chance to raise a child. This mismatch is one of the most tragic realities out there.
What the fuck kind of parent throws a 16 year old out in the streets? God damn.
I have an uncle by marriage with a similar upbringing to mine. When he was 15 his father punished him by forcing him to live in a homeless shelter. He drove him there every day after school and he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. My uncle had untreated ADHD at the time and instead of getting him help, his father just scapegoated him.* He’s a brilliant guy, makes me feel like an idiot, and eventually he got a Masters in computer engineering at an Ivy League school. I think for some of us, our accomplishments and drive are little more than a massive middle finger to the people who raised us to believe we were failures.
*I was diagnosed with ADHD myself at 34 (Inattentive, not hyperactive) and holy shit did that shed some light on the dynamics at home. My mother always told me something was seriously wrong with my brain and nobody would believe her. She complained constantly that I was careless and didn’t pay attention. She was kinda right. People are skeptical to this day when I tell them because I don’t fit the stereotype.
A highschool friend of mine was kicked out by her step-mom at 17ish. She some to our house first. She had a job at a local dept.store. She later room and boarded with an elderly woman, for free, the woman just wanted someone with her at night. She did several things like this before she was able to rent her own place. She put her self through nursing school and is quite successful. Ironically her step-mom lived with her with she got old and sick. I don’t know if I coulda done it.
I was seriously underweight, at 18–I might not have been able to join.
BTW–assumptions out of hand, much?
On my eighteenth birthday I had nine weeks of high school left and had already been accepted into college and paid my part of fall semester.
At the time I had been living alone in our family’s home while the rest of the family took care of my great grandmother who was senile over 100 miles away at the behest of my grandfather who was dying of cancer and didn’t want his mother put in a nursing home. While I can’t imagine failing out of high school it had been a lot of work to convince my parents not to make me move in with a family friend then, so I can imagine screwing up somehow and them deciding not to let me stay in the house then…
Best case scenario I could have found a friend whose family would take pity on me for the rest of the school year. Failing that, my mom’s friend probably would have still been willing for me to stay there. Worse case, I would get my aunt to take me in, and it’s only the worst case because what senior wants to change schools in April?
Regardless I would have likely ended up with that aunt for the summer.
My parents only gave me money for college at all that first semester so other than needing a place to stay the summers I had gone home in reality I don’t think it would have gone much differently here.I took out loans and worked anyway.
I was living with my mum on my eighteenth birthday, move out on my own initiative four days later … wound up hitchhiking up and down Big Sur for about a year … so getting kicked out would have been much the same except I probably wouldn’t have returned to mow the lawn, but then again I might have … Mom had money after all …