Now What?

 Now that the three of us are in Phoenix, now what?  It is funny when I watch TickTock and see clips about Gen Xers not giving a fuck about anything and not being scared of anything.  It is so true!  We grew up differently and my two friends and I fit right smack dab within the description of what a Gen Xer is.  I mean, we just hit "adulthood" and traveled from small towns in upper Michigan and the U.P. and drove to Arizona via paper fold-up map by ourselves, eating spaghetti-o's and fruit cocktails from the can so we didn't have to spend money on food and doing so in a two-seater car with no actual trunk.  We end up in the literal "hood" of Phoenix (not exaggerating with the term hood) with the only actual fear being how we were going to get a job to start making money.  

    Funny side note story to give you an image of where we were living....the day we got there or the next day, my friend and I decided it is a good time to call home and tell our families we got to Phoenix safe.  We had to use phone cards at the time to call home on a pay phone, yes a pay phone and we put our ears against the phone to speak.  We actually didn't know what type of neighborhood we were in because we had never been around a neighborhood like the one my Mom lived in before and basically we didn't know good neighborhoods from bad ones and we just plain didn't care.  As we were walking down the road to the payphone we were approached by a pregnant lady who was holding the hand of a toddler who was not any older than 2 years old, both were pretty darn dirty.  The lady was actually a pretty large woman compared to my friend and me with hair going everywhere in literally every direction.  The lady says "Do you have crystal?" I looked at my friend confused thinking why does she want A crystal?  My friend looks at her and says no and grabs my hand really fast to walk away.  I looked at my friend and say "Why does she want a crystal?, you have one around your neck" My friend says "No Dummy! She is talking about the drug!"  Even after my friend said that to me I was stumped...drug?  What was crystal?  Not till later I thought about how bad I felt for that child she was dragging down the street with her.  

     Back to that Gen Xer that we are; the entirety of "figuring it out on your own" was real with us.  We needed to figure it out on our own how to survive in the new huge city (remember we were all from small little itty bitty towns in Michigan) on our own.  I didn't have a parent to ask for help.  BUT BUT BUT!!!.... have no fear I had Susie there! 

     Believe it or not, my Mom told us how to hustle for money.  She told us, if you need money, go to the corner gas station put on our pretty smiles, look cute and ask men for some extra cash to fill up the little ol' Fiero even if we had enough gas.  And yes people it worked!  

   Was it safe?  Absolutely not!  However, we did what we needed to do to make it work.