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Originally Posted by marc26
jaybee,
your quote about family has me thinking. being from the east coast, living out in the west coast, do you think there is a more sense of family in the east, or no?
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Yes. For the white people, especially. I was the black sheep of the family. I knew from the time I was 6 years old that I didn't fit in to my world back East. By the time I was 20, I broke with my family, had nothing to do with them, and the only contact was through a girl who my mother knew, who would keep her informed about my whereabouts. After about a year, that led to patching things up with the family, because it was hard for my mother to not ever see me. One by one, I made my peace with my brothers and sisters and we are close in spirit, although separated by distance. It was many years before my father and I completely mended the split. It was not until the year before he died that we were 100% back together. He was very traditional and face was important to him, but face didn't matter to my mother at all.
So what you have, is on the West coast, a lot of people, who were misfits in the East where things are more traditional, and came to start a new life in the West. Overall, the attitude is very "live and let live" here. You stay out of my shit, and I'll stay out of yours. Face doesn't mean much. Nobody likes to lose face. But when it happens, it's like "so what, who gives a f*ck," and it is quickly forgotten, in most cases. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again. In some ways, it is a "what have you done for me lately" mentality, and people have short memories. Unless you are really tight with someone, then that is pretty much the way it works. But even with my friends, I have had major hassles sometimes, where out interests were in complete opposition to each other. But when the situations had played out, even though we had opposed each other and worked intensely against each other's interests, we kissed and made up. Because there was respect there. They respected that I had to do what was in my interests, and I respected that they had to do what was in their interests.
But in the last 15 years, there has been such an increase in the Hispanic and Asian populations here, and their families are tighter, but still maybe not as tight as where they came from. So a lot of it depends on where you came from and what your background is.
JayBee
