Ignorance Isn't Bliss

Some people beleive that ignorance is bliss but I am not one of those people. I feel extremely grateful to have been raised in a place where I was exposed to anything and everything. I'm grateful that I went to a high school where girls got pregnant, where there were gang members, where there was easy access to drugs, where the majority of the student body wasn't LDS, and where it was a miracle if your went longer than 2 minutes without hearing someone swear. Most people don't understand why I consider myself grateful to have been exposed to all of this, but I have grateful because even though I was surrounded by it on a daily basis I learned at an early age how they could ruin my life and so even though my friend were doing these things I had no desire to. Moving to a small town where most of them have never meet a person who has done drugs and almost their entire high school was LDS was a big adjustment for me. At first I was really defensive when someone would start in on all of these behaviors but I just had to remind myself that there weren't given the opportunity to get to experience these things first hand. Because I was exposed to all of this in high school I had no desire to experiment in college when most of the small town kids were. Ignorance isn't bliss.