How did "handmedowns" affect your street cred?

i gotta used geo from my older brother… and made it to where a friend of mine’s dad rear ended it and i got a new car since it wasnt my fault. so… in a roundabout way… positively.

I was raised on the “wrong side of the tracks” by loving hard working parents of 8 kids. I worked hard and am now considered a leader in the community. I have not forgot where I came from and still give a helping hand where I can. I feel it made me a better person.

Hand me downs have never negatively affected me.

It would seem to me that if one comes from a poorer background one has more appreciation of the good things that come ones way.
We were dragged up kicking and screaming from a household with very very little expendable income yet the affects of that poverty has given me nothing but a positive outlook on my life.
I got “Hammer Toes“from wearing shoes a size too small though.

Oooh, I felt so awful having to line up outside for government cheese one year. I was terrified that someone from school would see me and pull one of those Eddie Murphy ”‘cause yo’ momma on the welfare!” routines on me. Yes, I was 12, how did you guess?

I know the value of a buck, though, and I’m grateful for everything I’ve got now.

I grew up getting handmedowns from my uncles…it wasnt hard to cope with because i’m a tom-boy but when i got into high school people started to harass me about it so i got a job working on a small farm to buy new clothes or at least clothes that were in decent shape from thrift stores.

kids are cruel man

I was the oldest so I didn’t get any handmedowns. I dunno if it woulda mattered tho-I didn’t have a lot of street cred.

I was the oldest, and didn’t even have cousins or other relatives to pass on outgrown clothes. Instead, I had to wear whatever my mom bought until I was in high school. Many of the things she chose were mortifying—especially the jeans that were always too short.

My two boys wear a lot of hand-me-downs. They have older cousins who give us their outgrown clothes. I love it, and the boys do too. They are 4 and 5, and think getting to wear their cousins’ clothes is the coolest thing ever (they really look up to them!). The clothes are really good quality, so even after my oldest son outgrows them a lot of them are still nice enough for my youngest to wear. I usually have to buy them each a few things each fall and summer, but on the whole those hand-me-downs save us a lot of money. I’m sure one of these days my boys will no longer think the used clothes are so cool. :(

y’allz got handmedowns?????

You is the rich kids!

Handmedowns? Luxury! I had to wear threadbare, worn dishrags sewn together with the hair what come out of my head when I ran me fingers through it!

I remember being teased in grade school (about 1966) because my socks didn’t match. They were both white but I didn’t have a lot of supervision getting ready for school and I had to scrounge what I could find. Many holes in socks and underwear that I tried to sew up as best as a second grader could. I was wearing clothes that were hand me downs to my older sister which were bought before that at St Vincent de Paul. I was “that” kid who cried on the playground every day, had a runny nose and never seemed to be able to make it to school on time. My mom had to work because my dad was dieing. My older sister was hitting adolescence and was not really paying attention to what was going on with me. Awful times.
Long term effect? _I am a compassionate and empathetic person and I have no problem calling out bullies.

Street cred? I never had no stinkin’ street cred. I was a female nerd who hung out with one or two other, equally badly dressed nerds.

When I was little I wore handmedowns from the boy across the street (I am a girl, BTW). After I outgrew them they went to my brother, and those that survived his tenure went to my sister. They were all T-shirts and blue jeans, with an occasional pair of overalls. As the oldest once I started school I wore homemade dresses mixed in with a few handmedowns from the church.

We did get new shoes, though. We always had three pairs: school shoes bought in September, go to church shoes bought at Easter, and sneakers bought in June.

However, I didn’t have to work my way through college because it was paid for by my parents’ savings.

@Darwin ; You were lucky! I remember shopping for shoes once a year when school started. I had to be careful because it had to go with pants and dresses because it was the only pair of shoes I got all year. Isn’t it fun competing for who was the most pathetic?

@Judi – The thing is that if your feet grew during the year you still had just those three pairs. And the school shoes were always oxfords. The only choice you might get was color, if there was a choice.

Even if they were not growing, I grew up in Oregon and when they wore out my feet were wet from the holes in my shoes every day!!

I was the kid that the teachers took pity on. More than once (in elementary school), they scrounged through the lost-and-found to get me something I needed. When I showed up for school during a snow shower wearing a pair of summer sandals, they gave me proper shoes and a pair of gloves. I was a ‘free lunch’ kid, and back then you had to present a bright orange ticket to the lunch lady for your free lunch, so everyone knew you were poor. Most of my real friends were just as poor as we were, but it wasn’t much fun to be a poor kid at a rich school.

As I got older, my mom always had me answer the phone and lie to the bill collectors, and our power got turned off due to non-payment fairly regularly. I got my first job at the age of 14, and paid for all my own clothes, medical expenses (including long overdue ones incurred before I started working) and gave my mother some money for rent from that point on.

The whole experience taught me many lessons, mostly of the ‘what not to do’ kind. It has made me very grateful that my children have had a very different experience than I did.

Wearing handmedowns was great.
Between three older siblings, I had quite the selection.
I was a bit of a tomboy and it saved me the hassle of shopping.

Though clothing wasn’t limited to the trickle down effect.
My older siblings would steal my clothes too.
(Usually thrift store finds.)

So it was probably more like a communal closet.
As for having street cred….hahaha.