A Hated Truth

my first essay for Comp.1(the second time)

“Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.” The previous quote by Charles M. Schulz is only one example of the stereotype that your home is a representation of who you are. In the next few paragraphs, I will be explaining why I dislike that this stereotype is true.

Before you can understand why I dislike the stereotype, that your home is a representation of who you are, you must first understand my homes. My first home will mostly likely always be a huge part of my life, mostly because I lived in it for the first seventeen years. We lived in Sogn, MN, a little “town” of fifteen people in a valley, miles away from the closest town. When I was first brought home from the hospital after my birth, the house was only a third of the size it is today. It wasn't until my brother was born that dad and mom realized we needed a bigger house and instead of moving, my parents decided to add on a three-car garage, a ginormous master bedroom, a large second bathroom, a huge playroom, a nice deck, and two new bedrooms designed for me and my brother. The only rooms in the house that weren't white walls with brown carpet were mine, the pink room, and my brothers, the blue room. So many happy memories are from that house and I cherish every one.

I had for the longest time believed that I was going to live there until I moved away for college, it wasn't until the summer before my senior year of high school that I found out this was going to change. A few days after his father’s funeral, Dad found out that the possible transfer of his department at work from Stanton, MN to Slater, IA was going through and they wanted to know if he was going. While I had known about the possibility for over a year, I never thought it was going to ever happen. We ended up moving into a house about half the size and in the middle of a big town, Boone, IA, instead of the county. It took about a year before I started to consider our new house to be my home. While some things have been added to the walls to decorate, dad hanging up all his Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Twins stuff our T.V. room, for the most part we really haven’t decorated much, something that hasn’t changed from the first 

Now that you know more about my homes, I will explain why I dislike that this stereotype is true. I have come to realize how much I dislike that the stereotype has to be true because of all the evidence that supports it. At first I wanted to claim how the stereotype was false because of moral and ethical reasons, but was unable to support it with evidence. When forced to look back at my own home, I kept seeing evidence supporting that the stereotype was true. I really don’t like how people are judged by how their home looks. This is especially true while I was reading Lamy’s essay, even her mom saw the houses as failures. In the fifth paragraph, Lamy describes one of her neighbors’ apartments that she vividly remembers. As you read each sentence you are greeted with a visual tidal wave.

In conclusion, while I don’t like how the stereotype, that your home is a representation of who you are, is true that does not mean that it is false. Why should someone be judged on how they decorate their own home? I have never and probably will never understand why people are judged just because their house doesn't look “perfect”.