Childhood experience in Chicago (Essay Sample)

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Childhood experience in Chicago
When I was a small child, I used to reside in the middle part of Chicago suburbs. My childhood experience in Chicago is quite sentimental as stories of time spent along the waterways proliferate in both memoirs and illusory accounts of growing up in this region. The reminiscences constitute of both adverse and positive encounters of my childhood experiences. There are innumerable counts of controversial issues affecting children born in Chicago including myself. The environment set forth by Chicago nationals and authorities presented insurmountable challenges for me while growing up as a native in this former medieval region. Having spent a considerable amount of my life in the marginalized part of the rural Chicago, I fully understand the struggles of living in a poor and abandoned inner city neighborhood. It is exposure to this kind of life that made one realize money is an important vehicle of life.
The life I was accustomed to expose us to all kinds of criminal gangs as a means of livelihood. The struggle for survival was intense as democratic values were disregarded since they were a constant reminder of how marginalized we were. Consequently, sometimes parents also left us to fend for ourselves. This phenomenon is still deeply ingrained in my mind as I ponder how the so called democratic governments did nothing about the situation.
I recount of the numerous times we encountered running battles with the law enforcement officers for hawking along the streets or perhaps because of robbing shopping centers. Though we had no options at our disposal with regard to finding a meaningful livelihood, we all dreaded incarceration. In the mean time, our parents or guardians would be on another part of this democratic nation trying to work for a meal for the day. Our guardians had little time to impart indispensable values of life in us. In fact, it was up to us to cultivate our spirituality on our own for those who cared to do so. There was widespread fear that the forthcoming generations would be rocked by ruthless juvenile delinquencies (Clapp, 1998). However, there was intense family dysfunction that led to emergence of wayward children who had no regard for anyone or anything.
Using public transportation modes was often subject for nostalgia. Having ridden trains and cabs for all of that life, I am accustomed to the crowds, the noises, the smells and the basic sense of moving through a cosmopolitan city. I cannot recount of ever attending school since it was too expensive for my parents. However, we still had a chance to acquire other types of knowledge from the immediate environment.
As challenging as it was being raised in Chicago, there was also the awesome experience. Growing up in Chicago invariably nurtured the sense of living self-gratifying lives. W...