Drugs and Alcohol
...ious mental issues. Her mother was very violent women even to the point where she would cause serious injuries to her own children. When Roberta Rohbeson was a younger her own mother hit her in the face with the receiver of the telephone. When Roberta’s mother first found out the Roberta was on drugs she flipped out. Barry states, “the cords of her neck were sticking out extremely and she had to restrained by others to keep from killing the author” (4). This type of parenting would cause any young kid to grow up a little disturbed and disoriented. The father was no prize either for he was a butcher who was very aggressive as well. They called him the knife man because of his occupation and because of the murder-spree flight he went on from the Northwest in 1967. The fact that Roberta knows about her father and his past makes everything much more difficult for her. Fortunately for Roberta he was dead as she did not have to deal with him also. If she had to deal with Clyde, her father, then drugs and alcohol might not be the only things that she was getting herself into. Roberta’s neighbors did not help out the situation either because they were people of who lived a life of poverty as well and also have flaws of their own. The first of her demented neighbors is Old Red. This guy has some major problems with his life and his dying urge to show people what he looks like without any clothes on. Old Red is believed to be a businessman, an executive at Boeing who is very high up in the company, yet he always seems to get these urges to run out in the street and flash the neighborhood. Another neighbor that is would be very disturbing to a little girl is the saggy underwear guy. The saggy underwear guy is a drunk that lives on the same street as Roberta who doesn’t seem to ever want to pull up his pants and doesn’t care what anyone thinks about him. “I AM what I AM and that is ALL I AM and I AM IT” (6), he said just before he fell over the side rail and landed into a bush. The owner and landlord of all the houses where Roberta lives is Mr. Harmong. She describes him as, “the cheapes chintziest most pig-lipped tightwad skanked-out lardo king landlord of all time” (7). He is always giving Roberta and the rest of the tenants a hard time and threatening them because he has his eye on everything. Roberta states, “The last time he was here he clamped his fingers on my hand tight and stuck his pig lips out and asked me if I was old enough to have a boyfriend. He better not see no coon-asses sniffing up after me because he has people watching us” (7). Any little girl would have hard time dealing with these type of neighbors, even enough to force them towards using and abusing drugs and alcohol. Young kids also abuse drugs and alcohol for other reasons than to escape from reality and into a world of peace and happiness. They also use drugs and alcohol for reasons such as peer pressure or to fit in with the crowd. Peer pressure can cause a young person to do a lot of things that they never intended to do. One of the most important things to a young person is to be liked and to have friends, yet these young people believe that if you stand up for what you know is right then their peers may hold judgment against them causing the young person not to fit it. Therefore, many young get themselves involved in...