I've held this piece in the freezer for a couple of months, but Rankin' Rob recently wrote a piece where he said that those who's lives were hog-tied by drugs and alcohol need look no further for the source of their addictions than their rough childhoods, or failed adult relationships.

I had to disagree with this. My dad had a rough childhood, and as far as I know he's never been in the same room with marijuana, and is bone dry. My mom wouldn't have had him around any other way. My hypothesis was some people might have a party-hearty gene in overdrive, but looking for others to blame was horse shee-ot. It's only a step away from validating being a thief by saying you grew up poor; all that "victim culture" the conservatives talk about.

That in mind, here's today's post...

A benefit of being one of only about 10 white people where I work is that I get to be a fly on the wall while black people talk. What I hear might surprise those who have bought into conservative talk radio's "straw woman" argument of the black single mother having welfare babies to draw more money. It might also surprise people like Rev. Jeremiah "Goddamn America" Wright who think all black people buy their "the white devil will getcha" sermons. What a girl named Sherri said the other day, for example, gave me a quiet chuckle.

The gay black guy in our group was expressing what a joke he thought it was that some girl had said she wanted her reparations from the government for slavery. Sherri said she'd heard the same speech from people she knew, and she also thought it was nuts.

"She said she wanted reparations," Sherri was saying, "and I said, 'What for?' She said because she was poor. I said, 'The state of Georgia has the HOPE Scholarship and all kinds of grants you can apply for. Apply for some of those, get your ass in school, and get a job!

"It's like I go back to Chicago and the people who were hanging out on the corner are still there and everything's the same. I say, 'I got out of here 10 years ago. Ain't you come up yet?' It's like they don't want to come up!"

I had never really talked to Sherri much because she seemed really shy when she first came to the call center, but she talked a little bit about her early life. She said her dad was a drunk and a drug addict who missed her wedding. He had disappeared when she was young and she was glad. However her mom lacked taste in men and brought in similar types from time-to-time. Though her mom remembered to bring men home, she didn't remember to pay bills, and Sherri said they had gone months without water or electricity, and even slept in the park once.

But Sherri goes to college online now while also working at the call center full-time. She's getting a degree in accounting. I asked her how she picked accounting and she said she just looked at a list of the Top 10 careers "and that was one of them, so I said, 'I guess that's what I gotta do.'" I lack the ability to be that dry and admire it in others.

So her mom and dad were screwballs, and she said she also had to raise her younger sister's kid for awhile after she got pregnant in high school. I asked her where did she get such focus and drive when everyone around her was fuck ups? She said, "I just looked at them and said, 'I don't want to be like that.'"

Sherri isn't classically beautiful, but she does have a nice figure and is kinda cute in a way. I have to say her drive and ability to be objective and dry-eyed in the face of overwhelming odds causes some tingling.

So if somebody tells you they had to become meth heads because they didn't get in the best boarding school, or got dumped from the cheerleading squad, you tell them what Sherri said.