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Only Child: A Teenager Talks About Family

Darrion Mosley
Basim Blunt
/
WYSO
Darrion Mosley

We have no control over certain things that have a huge impact on how we grow up — like whether we have siblings. Today’s Dayton Youth Radio story is from an only child. 

Hi, my name Darrion Mosley and I am 18 years old.

I live in a single parent home and was raised by my mother, Angela Mosley. My father wasn’t really in my life that much, but that didn’t stop my mother from doing what she had to do. She got pregnant with me at the age 17 while she was in high school. After my mom got pregnant, she started working at Miami Valley Hospital where she was only making minimum wage. Making minimum wage and having a child would be kind of stressful with no help from my father. 

I'm the only child, and my mom said after I was born she was done with having kids forever. The good thing about being the only child is, I guess I can say, I have a lot of space to myself more than people that have siblings. I don't have to babysit at all.

I guess the bad thing about being the only child is you get lonely...like really lonely, like super lonely. If I'm bored at home all the time, of course I would want to leave. As I got older, my mom started making my punishments me staying at home, because she knew I didn't like staying at home. She would be like, "Give me those keys! You ain't going nowhere else, this that and a third." And I was like wow. That's what she did to me, and I gotta say it worked, because it use to kill me.

We had to go to my grandmothers house to watch cable. I remember one time when things were getting a little tight, we weren't eating that much becuase she only had money for the bills to be paid. She had to keep the water on and all the other bills that had to be paid in the house. My mom felt cable wasn’t a necessity and would be too much for her budget or whatever, and we just had regular TV. I think it was only seven channels probably. She was like, "Your grandmother has cable. You can go over there and watch cable anytime you want."

And that was that. But my mom still made ends meet.

My mom wasn't really alone though. Ahe had help from my aunts and my grandmother. I was raised by a lot of women, or I was raised around women all my whole life.

I am on the varsity basketball team, and I've been playing varsity since my sophomore year. When I was younger I used to always watch my cousin play basketball all the time. Her name is Shatoria Gillette. She was a really good shooter in high school. She was like Stephen Curry; she wore number 32. There would be times when we would just go outside, and she would teach me how to dribble. When I started playing basketball in the third grade, I was just using my skills that she taught me and I've always known how to shoot because of the skills I learned from  her.

My family isn’t that big; it's really only like 9 of us, and we are very close with each other. My mother has always been there for me like whenever. My mom was a single parent working in a minimum wage job, and now she's a nurse. She went back to school, and now she's a nurse. My mom has always been there for me. I never got all the things I wanted, but my mom still made an effort to get it if she could.

Basically shout out to all the single parents out there. If you are a single parent, it's not the end of the world. Just do what you gotta do, you know, just be there for your child all the time. That's the best thing that you can do. Just never give up you know really, just never never give up.

Darrion Mosley is a senior at Ponitz CTC High School. Special Thanks to Ponitz Radio media arts instructors Joanne Viskup and Jeffrey Crowell and to Katie Davis. Learn more at the school's website: http://ponitzctc.org. Dayton Youth Radio is supported by the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.

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