I am self-aware enough to understand that I had quite a sheltered childhood. I didn’t have to worry about much, even if we were struggling, my parents still put me before themselves and made sure that I was taken care of and that I didn’t worry about anything behind the scenes. Even outside of my family, growing up in Madison kept me sheltered from other, larger areas filled with more crime and overall, more stuff in general. Now that I have lived in Pensacola for four years, I have definitely expanded my horizons and unsheltered myself a little bit. But still, I hear about what goes on in other communities or in other peoples’ lives and am shocked by the differences in my own life. I have been working on projects involving other areas for work, and in doing so, I have read about events throughout the year for Madison as well as those other areas. The first thing I noticed with other counties was the higher crime stories coupled with more gory details than what is happening in Madison. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of bad things that happen everywhere, but some of the crime stories that seemed common in other areas were ones that I have only heard about in movies or very large cities across the country.
I say this to share my gratitude with the county as well as my family regarding the “sheltered” parts of my life. Here, there really isn’t that much to worry about and when there is, those instances are few and far between. The same cannot be said about other towns or cities. While being sheltered can be the target point of embarrassment in some cases, there are other points in our lives where we should be grateful for the ‘averageness’ or seemingly ‘sheltered’ areas of our childhoods or even our lives right now. Madison may be small, but part of that ‘shelter’ the county provides is from things we would not want to be a part of anyway. Remember this whenever you feel embarrassed for your sheltered-ness.