Ahh, finally the moment of vengeance we’ve all been waiting for – the time when all those spoiled rotten children that would disturb the peace in public spaces, come to their senses. And we get to read how it went down straight from the horses’ mouths. Enjoy.
For more stories, check out the original thread at the end of the article.
I grew up in a fancy home with more rooms than you could ever need on a large property in a pretty rural area. I got everything I wanted – whenever I wanted; huge plasma T.V, DSLR camera, motorbike, pony etc. I never knew what my parents really did for a living. I remember kids always asking what my parents did as a job in the playground and I never really knew how to respond.
I soon figured out what my parents did when my dad was arrested for drug trafficking and the house, cars and everything else was repossessed by the government as profits of crime. I now live in a crappy house that barely stands in a dodgy area of town, it definitely was a shock to the system but I’m adjusting just fine I guess.
deleted
I was a spoiled rotten child and also into my teen years. My parents bought me a brand new red convertible for my 16th birthday. I threw a fit over it because what I actually wanted was my brother’s old car (that we still had) which was dark blue in colour. I was so shallow and a horrible person back then…
So what really turned me around? That next summer I took a job as a camp counselor at a local day camp. I did not have to work but I was bored and it sounded like something easy to do. God, I was so wrong.
This day camp was specifically geared to the lower classes who could not afford child care during the summer. We served them breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. For a lot of the camp kids this was all they would eat that day and on Friday’s they would beg for extra food and snacks to take home for themselves and their siblings because they may not get to eat again until Monday. This really hit me hard but the part that got me the most..
was this one kid (around 5-6) that would refuse to take his shoes and socks off, even if we were going to the public pool that day. I couldn’t understand why, until one day he came in limping, like his feet were causing him so much pain. I convinced him to let me help him get his shoes and socks so I could see what might be bothering him. Once I did, it took everything in me not to break down right there. His socks were covered in blood. His poor tiny little feet were covered in sores and his toes seemed to curl under a bit. He was in so much pain from the state of his feet. As it turns out, he had been wearing shoes about 3 sizes too small. His family couldn’t afford new shoes. I took my lunch break and went out to buy him new socks and a few pairs of shoes.
This broke me..which I definitely needed. It changed my way of thinking forever.
vixiecat
I grew up in Indonesia, a 3rd world country where you’d definitely have maids if you’re writing posts on the internet. I grew up thinking it’s common to have multiple maids.
I moved to Singapore, a 1st world country where people still have maids, but it’s more of an upper-middle class thing. I got assigned to sweep the floors by the teachers, and that was my first time holding a broom.
I swept it back and forth like in cartoons, and everyone was looking at me going, “Er, what the heck are you doing?”
It turns out I was just creating a dust cloud around me. You have to sweep in one direction and gather all the dust into the dust pan.
Mind blown.
eraser_dust
I was raised by my great grandmother. She was wealthy, active well into her 80’s and her world revolved around me. Ballet, gymnastics, all the music classes I could fit in my schedule. I had a menagerie of pets. Christmases were obscene. She catered to my every whim as a child.
Now that I’m an adult and my wonderful gram has passed, I’ve learned that what I had was really unique. The world does not wait on me, I’m not special to everyone. I struggle with entitlement and narcissistic tendencies. It’s isolating at times and I miss her.
Just_Four_More
I got told that I was a “very rude person” by an instructor at music summer camp after 11th grade. It was a huge reality check for me and really changed how I interacted with people.
This was almost three years ago at a camp that took place at the University of Indianapolis. The instructor in question was British which was probably why she was so upfront about it. If I remember correctly, the particular thing she was saying this to wasn’t very major: I hadn’t been feeling very well that morning but I was better by the time of my lesson that afternoon, and when she asked me how I was feeling during my lesson, I brushed it off with “oh, yeah, I’m fine” pretty curtly without even thanking her for asking me. I’m sure what she said wasn’t just in response to that, though, as I was a rude person and even if I hadn’t been rude directly to her, she most likely saw or heard me being rude to other people.
Initially my feelings were hurt, but after thinking about it I realized she was right and really tried to change my behavior.
And in case most of my rudeness stemmed from a combination of being the spoiled youngest child (I have five older siblings, and there’s almost a 20 year span between the oldest and me) and having a rude mother.
I learned from the best, apparently.
tobadiah_stane
I grew up in a midwestern town, middle class neighborhood with a private school and more. I never needed anything but my dad grew up poor and my parents wouldn’t give into any of my big “wants” (Super Nintendo I never got… haha).
My neighbor and best friend got everything he asked for. I loved hanging at his house because he had the best T.V, the best food, the newest video games, 100 pairs of shoes and 1000 hats.
After we moved away, I found out that his parents gave him anything he wanted because they were in a loveless marriage and constantly fought around him. They were buying love when my parents were showing me love. I always wondered why he would prefer to stay at my house with a crappy T.V and an outdated Nintendo with no games. It turns out he wanted to stay at our house because my parents didn’t fight and would actually listen to him.
My parents became surrogate parents for him and to this day he calls them mom and dad, I’m happy to call him brother. If it weren’t for him, I would never have known how I won the parental lottery.
RonnieHasThePliers
When I was 16 my parents left for a week long vacation and gave me money for the week.
Since I didn’t know how to do laundry (never even seen it done) I took all my clothes to the dry cleaner. Even my underwear. The cleaners asked 3 times if I was sure I wanted them dry cleaned. I said yes. Two days later I got 8 pair of panties safety pinned to individual hangers. My “laundry” cost about $90 that week. I just assumed this was all normal.
The real world hit me only much later. It’s only in retrospect I see I was spoiled. It sort of came around when I had a limited allowance and budget in college. I was spoiled but not rich. More naive than anything.
d_ippy
I grew up with my mother doing everything for me. I was never taught many things because she would do everything (she’s an amazing mother don’t get me wrong, but I wish I was taught more).
Well now, I have a job where I take care of adults with mental disabilities. You basically have to do everything for them. You have to do all of the cooking, all of the cleaning, all of the laundry, and have to shower clients and change their clothes and diapers. Although, a small few of them can change themselves.
I’d say that this job is helping me a lot. It’s giving me more experience in the real world and a great opportunity to help my patients and spend time with them.
BriBriKinz
I realized that some people really struggle with money.
I thought people didn’t buy things they need (cars, appliances, clothes, a nice house) because they were really frugal and saving up. It’s not even that I didn’t know about poverty but I thought it was a third-world thing and that everyone in the U.S is pretty comfortable.
This didn’t sink in until college. I’m terrified for after-college.
rental_aquarium
I wasn’t necessarily spoiled but I definitely grew up in a very privileged family. I was upper middle class, with an academic father and lawyer mother. I was 17 and I got a job as a porter at a hotel to save and travel for a bit before going to university (my dad lives in Singapore so I figured I’d go to south east Asia).
I went to Indonesia, Yogyakarta to see Borobudur, and I was staying in a decent-but-not-super-fancy hotel near the temple. It was my first night and I had no idea if tipping was the normal thing and didn’t have any rupiah on me so I put a U.S $5 bill under my plate when I left (working in a hotel you get foreign currency tips, the note was worth more as a novelty to be honest).
As the waitress cleared the plates and I was walking away she freaked out, thinking I had left it there. She didn’t speak a lot of English but I got it across that it was a tip and she basically broke down. It wasn’t a lot of money so I was really confused.
I made the mistake of googling median wages of the area when I got back. Median, not even minimum, salary is about $3000 U.S a year. What I made in about 2 hours at a minimum wage hotel job, she made in a week busting her butt for 80 hours. I tipped WELL all through my trip. Even bought the crappy nicknacks from the hawkers by the temple. It was freaking gutting.
fight-de-la-nightman
I grew up thinking we had money. It turns out we didn’t, my parents just spoiled me every time I threw a fit. When I was 16, I chose to do a biography assignment on my mom because I realized I knew little about her youth.
When my mother told me her best birthday gift was every 3 years she’d get new slippers since she tore through her one pair from growing. And that her annual gift was fabric to make her own dress (when I had recently begged for a homecoming gown that was $250 so that made me feel instantly crappy). She also didn’t see a movie until she was 17-years-old, which hurt me the most since cinema had shaped my life up until that point. The thought of being deprived such a lovely escapism was hard to hear. She also never had an education and didn’t learn to read until her late 30’s. Learning about how my mother grew up was life changing to me.
We weren’t rich but I was so spoiled rotten. I’m not sure if it was because my parents knew what it was like to have nothing. My mother grew up in a rural farm without electricity and when she moved to America for the first time at 23, she asked her soon to be husband what the white machine in the kitchen was and he said “a dishwasher!” To which she replied, “I knew white women were lazy!”
This inspired me to never ask for money or beg again. That month I saved 3 months of my wage to buy my first real camera at 16.
I now make way more than I thought possible with my camera and I don’t think without her struggles and hearing her struggles, I would have ever half as close as I am today.
And believe me, I’ve tried to pay it forward to her. But my mother does not wants gifts ever so I try to create experiences with her instead. We go on road trips, mother and daughter dates, have daily gym workouts and I’m planning a really big 60th birthday party for her next year.
lizosban
I grew up living in a huge hotel. Kind of like your Suite Life of Zack and Cody thing except that I was a spoiled young kid. When I was 7, I’d have a nanny put on my socks, wear my school uniform everyday etc. I had four nannies before that and they all left. I made one cry once because I yelled at her for not helping me with my math homework. I slapped another one. She left 3 months later.
It hit me hard a year or two later when my dad had to travel overseas to work so I was stuck with this one particular nanny named Tina. My dad didn’t really send a lot of money back to us and so we had to live in a cramped apartment since we needed to move out of that particular hotel. I hated my nanny at the beginning because she was just so damn strict. It turns out that she was doing this because she wanted us to change, and we did.
Because my dad didn’t send enough money and didn’t want to (stingy guy), we had to ration our food on some days and I couldn’t go to many school activities because we didn’t have a car like we used to. And we didn’t have enough money. This was hard on my brother and I because we went to a private international school so it was really hard not trying to show others our personal struggle. It was even harder on me as I was a prefect student at that school, and so not attending school activities and extracurricular stuff was the worst.
During that period, I learnt so much and begun to empathize effectively. I learnt to socialize with my neighbors and be independent. This made me enjoy my childhood living in that apartment more than I ever did living in a hotel. I owe it all to my nanny to be honest. I consider her my surrogate mom now regardless of the rough beginning and I honest to God, would not have changed one single bit if it wasn’t for her.
smoothbartowski