The Glass Castle Essay

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is an incredibly powerful memoir. Jeannette recalls her life and childhood and tells her story exactly how she remembers it. Her family was a little messed up, her father was an alcoholic and her mother was a little “loopy”. Neither of them could hold a job, so the family was always on the run from the police and other people who wanted the money the family owed them. Jeannette and her siblings knew that their environment was toxic, and they were able to get out as soon as they could. The children moved to New York City and began to live a better life. Eventually, the parents joined the kids in New York, but they remained homeless and living on the streets. The children thrived in New York, finding new jobs

I am incredibly lucky that both of my parents were both employed in well off jobs, so don’t think that I am taking any of this for granted. Since my parents worked, my brother and I were sent to a babysitter. Most children are sent to a babysitter at some point in their life, but I had a couple interesting babysitters. The first babysitter I remember having was named Kimberly, she lived down the street from us, so it was incredibly convenient. The earliest memory I have of her is when we were at the neighborhood lake. The details are a little fuzzy, but I remember her putting sand in our bathing suits. My mother was obviously not happy with this, and ended up firing Kimberly. The next babysitter I remember was a girl named Crystal. Crystal ended up being the longest babysitter my brother and I ever had, which I always found interesting because she was a little weird. Crystal was a cosmetology student, so she would always have practice doll heads around and it would freak me out. She had a younger sister that I would play with, and then Crystal would always watch Maury and lay on the couch all day. One time when I was about nine or ten, Crystal took me and her sister to her apartment so she could dye her hair. She was in the bathroom for almost two hours and she left her sister and I to watch Family Guy on her TV. Having a babysitter isn’t necessarily a crazy thing that happens to a child, but I did have some

Even though I have had some hardships in my life, I know that I have learned from the mistakes that I made or that other people made. I will take the things that I have learned and apply them to my own life. Dealing with these situations have made me a better person today and I know that it was better to go through these hard times than to never have experienced something like this. Staying positive and adding a little bit of humor to situations has helped me through the harder times in life. In life, there will always be ups and downs. It is good to learn from the down times rather than let them take