Little Boxes Persuasive Speech

“Little boxes on the hillside/ little boxes made of ticky tacky/ little boxes on the hillside/ little boxes all the same,” sang Malvina Reynolds. This song is so all-encompassing of the generations before us, who were taught with a very different mind fame. We, generation Y, were raised by omnipresent parents to believe we are special snowflakes. The generations before us were taught to toe the line, to fit in, that conformity was the best way; “All went to the university/ where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same/ and there's doctors and lawyers, and business executives/ and they all look just the same.” The key to understanding who our parents are and how they think lies in understanding who raised them. What were their
My grandfather living in Hungary, at the time, fought in World War II. Then he and my grandmother moved to the United States after the war ended; leaving their war-torn home looking for the American Dream. They were the generation of Happy Days, of do it yourself or not at all, and of hard work. Community minded with an emphasis on team work, the goal was to fit it, not to stand out: “Little boxes all the same.” My father, their only child, ensconced in the baby boomers, was a career climber and egged on by first generation parents; he worked hard for everything he had, moving away at eighteen and paying for his own education. Working his way up from entry level jobs then going back to school and getting his MBA: “and the boys go into business, and marry and raise a family/ in boxes made of ticky tacky/ and they all look just the same.” He did just that, always in search of a better job title and a challenged, he would change jobs as soon as he felt he had conquered the current one. This meant a lot of moving around for him, and then for my mother once they
He was there but there wasn’t much interaction until I was around six or seven. Around that time my father started to get involved in my education, probably more than was necessary for my age. I remember every morning, without fail, sitting down on the living room sofa with a big box of flash cards he had made. They started off with sight words: I had to read them, define them, use them in a sentence then spell them. Every morning! I hated it; I used to beg and cry to my mom not to make me do it; to tell my father that it was stupid, but he always seemed to win that argument. And I would sit there and do the flashcards with him until I got every single one right, then the box started to grow as he added other words to them and the daily torture continued. I don’t know why my mom never stopped him. Was it because she was trying to keep the peace or because that was one of the few times he ever acknowledged my brother or I? My mother, however, is ever-present in my memories, she stayed at home with us, until a divorce and being a single parent forced her back to work. My childhood was one that is never seen anymore, every morning breakfast wasn’t made for us, but with us, we were active in the kitchen, sometimes hindering more than helping. Afterwards sent outside, we were constantly outside, during the warm