In Search of My Community :: Personal Narrative essay about myself

In Search of My Community While trying to examine how my community has changed economically since the 80's, I found myself pondering what my community really was. I have had the unfortunate experience to understand how a person can feel as if they don't really belong. Since I had moved about nine times within my life, and I am only eighteen years old, I became stuck, without any ideas of what to write about. While facing this assignment, I realized that I did not know if I had a place I would consider my "community," or even my true "home." In the year of 1984, when I was born, my family lived in Reading, Pennsylvania. Reading was not an area known for its good economic reputation. Most of the people in the area could be considered lower-income, middle class individuals. Our community was composed mostly of factory workers and small business owners. My father was self-employed at the time, for he owned a retail establishment. In our neighborhood, we may have been one of the families that earned the most money per year. We lived in a duplex, but even then, we were still considered upper-middle class. My mother was working nights as a medical technologist, and this was all so she could stay at home with me during the day. My father never completed his college career, but my mother did. She needed that degree to pursue her career in the medical field, and to have the potential to earn more pay. Throughout the 1980's we moved around a lot. First we moved to Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania in 1985, and then we moved to Stafford, Virginia in 1987. In Sinking Spring we finally owned our own house, and we lived in a wealthier neighborhood than before. We were now neither the richest, nor the poorest, people on the block. The richest people living in the neighborhood worked as engineers, and the poorest were factory workers. In Virginia, it was about the same as it was in Sinking Spring. My father was no longer running his own retail establishment, he was now working in the sales and marketing field for a company named AMP.