I grew up in Mount Airy, a middle-class enclave in the Northwestern area of Philadelphia.
I grew up in South Central Los Angeles in the '80s, back when it just wasn't a cool scene. But my mother had the foresight to look for a number of projects that would keep us away from the streets.
My formative years would be in South Central Los Angeles. It was a really volatile environment, but, I always say, when you're living in the hood, you don't live this life where you're crying every day, downtrodden every day.
My family moved to York, Pa., when I was eight. As a kid I spent virtually all of my free time at Memorial Park, which was just down the street from my house on Springdale Avenue in our blue-collar neighborhood.
Of course there's some things that I would have liked to have... none of my friends growing up had their father in the house. None of 'em. We had uncles and stuff like that, but nobody had a father in the house, none of my friends.
On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.
I want my children to be able to meet and play and communicate with many other children on their own, not only when they are driven somewhere. I want them to grow up in an environment that is not just a place where people sleep but where people work.. and where people enjoy themselves.
I was always inspired by the people I was around, like the older people spitting in my area or in Northampton, but I just always wanted to be better than the people that was around me.
I grew up in a mobile home, but it wasn't like white trash - it was a beautiful mobile home park, I had a loving mother, there were kids everywhere, there was a playground in the center, I just grew up in poverty.
