My family can no longer go on living life as we had in the past. We must now resort to simpler ways of living like basic cable television and home cooked meals. For now, the word vacation is not even to be mentioned and shopping for new clothes is out of the question.
Recently my dad had been out of a job for about a whole year, but now he has found a job that gives him a pay check at the end of every month and even then things aren’t always as they seem, like the fact that his new job has gone into bankruptcy, so to make up for their loss they’re taking money away from his pay check. Now he is working long hours for less pay and my mom has converted from watching drama shows like Desperate House Wives and Medium to shows like Oprah, Dr. Phil, Channel 4 News and The Suzie Orman Show. The Suzie Orman Show is now my mother’s Bible. She watches and studies what Suzie says, word to word. She has even begun to follow Suzie’s Motto of “Can I afford that?” which in this case means no more spur of the moment stops to grab a drink from Starbucks or excite our taste buds with an icy treat from Dairy Queen. Also, my mom has started working as a preschool teacher at the church up the street from our house and my dad has begun his new, second job as a tax helper at H&R Block.
My family isn’t the only one that is hurting at this time; I see it everywhere. More small businesses that have opened up in Parker are closing down faster than they had arrived. More people are getting pay cuts due to their business going into bankruptcy or they are getting cut from their jobs so their company can save money. I see it every where, it is everywhere. Times are tough and people know it’s tough, but I wonder why more and more banks have opened in the past year. Banks are spreading like wild fire. A bank is opening on every block and across the street from each other. If America is hurting so bad right now, if Colorado is hurting so bad right now and if Parker is hurting so bad right now, then how could more banks be popping up faster than a mustang at full speed? I am being affected by the recession, so I understand, I see it. The other adults and children in my position understand as well. The people who have jobs in Parker, who go out to eat as much as they please, who go on vacation once or even more times a year forget all of us who are stuck in a recession. We are lost and they don’t have the slightest idea. Perhaps they don’t care or are too busy to notice we have gone a stray. I believe it is much more serious.
It’s become serious because in our day in age children have become spoiled and parents have become the push overs, under no control. I’ve seen it with my friend, Carolyn. She is a lost sheep, under no impression that the world around her is changing. She has been spoiled when she was little and she is spoiled now. As long as she gets to eat out with the family every Friday, go on vacation three times a year, go camping at least twice a year, go shopping almost every weekend and do costly activities whenever there is no school, her life is good. She questions how come I have to watch my favorite shows on the internet instead of just recording them on my TV and she wonders how I could ever survive without going out of the state at least once a year. My answer is hopefully it won’t happen to her and that she should become aware of the world around her, and then maybe she’ll understand. I hope that the people not lost in our recession will come and find us. I hope that someday they’ll pull us from this quick sand we call life that has begun to slowly fall apart.

For now, parents have created monsters and are not able to stop them, but I believe there are still good parents out there who follow the old traditions of raising a child. They will be our light that will pull us from this recession. With them, we still have hope. Even though the recession has made life hard, it has saved those of us that may have gone down the wrong path, a path of ingratitude for what we have and what is important like family. We are saved from those pushovers and children who are spoiled. We may be lost, but we are lost in the right place