Termite TV - Life Stories

My name is Alfia B. I’m not sure if you guys can hear me but I’m only 22 so my life story isn’t that long. I don’t know. I guess I’ll talk about my name. My name is Alfia, again I’ll tell you. I got that from my grandfather. His name was Alfred and he was, like a Jamaican immigrant. So, my grandparents and stuff came up here. I guess it’s important because it’s how I got here in the first place because my grandfather left Jamaica to avoid communism. He said something about, he though they were going to mix up with Cuba or something like that so I guess that’s part of the reason why I’m even here talking to you today because my grandparents came up here for that reason and met my- you know, my mother. So, that’s part of my life story. Another part I guess I’ll talk about is how my family’s from down south. They’re part of- they’re part of this group of people, a couple of coastal islands down there called the Gullah people. I guess that’s the other side of my family. I work here at the library, I’m engaged. I just wanted to say that on camera. Um, I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about my life story. I’m only 22 like I said and It’s a lot starting. I guess you could say my life story is starting now because I’m just getting to the age where I realize that I have to decide what is going to happen to me. And I guess I’m deciding how it’s going to change or flow from now. I guess when you’re 18 you think you know it all and everything else like that but when I’m 22 I think I’m just now realizing that I’m going to decide what my life story is going to be. And um, that’s something new to me. Uh (laughs). It’s so weird. I never thought about telling my life story in 5 minutes. I don’t even know how much time I have. Three minutes, ok. Wow, what else am I talking about? I don’t know. I guess I should talk about being from Philly. I’m loving it right now. I’m loving that in Philly I don’t have to have this New York complex like I used to when I was younger. I used to go to New York all the time with my grandparents. I would always feel “yeah, I’m from Philly” and muffle it. But now I feel like we have music goin on. We have Jill Scott, Grammy award nominations and everything. We have- like I feel like now is a really good time to be young, to be my age and to be from Philly and it just feels like a whole bunch of stuff is just sparking off in this city. And I feel like it’s a lot of potential for everything. For me now, for everybody here, so. I guess working at this library I get a lot of connections about that stuff too. I get to talk to a lot of people...um, what else it’s so weird. I never thought about filling up 5 whole minutes. That makes me think I need to hurry up and do some other exciting things in my life to fill up 5 minutes of time with because I can’t even do any – let me see what else have I done? Oh, I’m going back to school to be a teacher. I guess I should talk about that…exactly. I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to go back because every time I think I want to do it, I want to teach high school English, I’m on the subway and kids annoy the hell out of me. I mean they are so obnoxious at 18. And I think “If I can’t stand you on the subway, how will I be able to teach you in a school”. It’s like now I’m just weighing options between that and going to design school, or doing something. But that subway is like my constant reminder of I don’t like 18 year old kids. They’re annoying, They are just really annoying. Maybe I’ll come back to teaching. Maybe. You never know. I don’t know. I don’t know if I have anything else to fill up the time with but like I said, I’m only 22.I have a lot left to learn. I guess, a couple years from now, I might do this and I might be talking about having children or traveling abroad. I’ve never done that so…I guess this makes me think about what I plan on doing. I got a lot to think about. Ok well, that’s me in a nut shell. Next time I’ll have more to talk about. I’ll be older.