This post is unbelieveably sad. I won't even kill spiders in my house. If I am threatened by them, I catch them and put them outside.

Why would someone hurt a kitten? What goes through their minds?

Yes, but I don't hate people for not knowing better. My mom thought she was telling me the truth. She was trying to protect me from disappointment.

She was tragically wrong, but she was not a bad person. Just ignorant.

Honestly all of the swimmers I have known wear extra suits - drag suits - to add resistance during training.

How does he control the rudder?

hmmm..sounds like a serious syndrome.

Professional victims, maybe?

I hope you are right. Trust me - those people are not enjoying their lives. They just don't know a way out; and worse, they don't believe it can happen for them so they won't try.

I was brought up constantly being told that some people are just meant to be poor and there is nothing you can do about it so don't bother to graduate or aspire to anything greater than what you know.

Keep going for attention and stay away from the meth.

It's just sad, is all. Sometimes I will see a drugged-out teen with a baby and I think, that poor child hasn't got a chance. Somehow the idea of a chain gang doesn't cheer me up.

I can't talk to you because I am not a peer-aged female.

I have (had) a friend who totally SHREDDED me in the name of honesty. I mean, she called me every name in the book and said it was because I needed to hear it.


She kept going until I blocked her. Weird.

I agree with you about the children.

But who is going to do it? I have let them into my home before and they not only robbed me blind, their ghetto friends showed up on my doorstep.

It's a serious problem and self-perpetuating. There are a few, like you and myself, who can see beyond their circumstances and do whatever it takes to rise above. But most can't; and so the cycle of poverty and misery continues. I guess this is what you are talking about - the ghetto mentality. It has nothing whatsoever to do with race or skin color. It is a way of life; I know because I come from a family immersed in the ghetto way of thinking. I was the youngest of 8 and the first to graduate high school. The others didn't bother; dropped out and took low-level jobs; and now my sisters think I am "lucky" because I have a good job.

They really don't see that they bring it on themselves.

I don't want to argue with you; I agree with the concept of personal responsibility. However, I have seen some children that my child befriended, for example. Their parents had them at 16; the father is a drug dealer, the mother is scared, abused, uneducated.

These kids really don't have a chance in hell of making it in society. They never grew up because they were not raised.

Is that their fault? We tried to show them a better way but they could not see it. They are both hustling and dealing to get by, since they dropped out of high school.

They didn't have a strong parent behind them to support them and teach them how to live.

And they are not "minorities", at least in the sense that I think you mean it. They are caucasian.

I think brains are the sexiest part of a man.

Um..I grew up in the inner city. My family was hampered by mental illness, addiction, crime.

I am now a professional, and a college graduate. I own my own home and have raised a child by myself; a child who is now in college.

I do recognize, however, that not everyone that I grew up with had the strength or the will to get out the way I did. They don't see that they have to power to change their circumstances.

looks don't matter to me. I prefer timeless qualities like intelligence and kindness. Looks fade.

You look postively scrumptious without a shirt!

These problems are cross-cultural and are driven by societal problems of unemployment, lack of educational opportunity, and poverty.

It's harder to escape than you think; you don't know until you have lived it.

Tell me I am wrong!!!!

I am picky here and picky in real life. I am not going to go out with someone I don't want to go out with. Who would?

that is why there is such a thing as AAA

Who wouldn't? rushing headlong into big decisions leads to misery.