Maintaining A Positive Outlook On Life

By: Ashley Dreier

You would never guess by his easy going attitude, or his light-hearted sense of humor that 17 year-old Eddie Fiammetta has a troubled family life that went on for years, and from extreme to extreme.

Fiammetta was born in Pelham Bay, Bronx, on January 25, 1990. He lived with his mother until he was about two, when she disappeared from his life. At age eight, Fiammetta found out that she was working next door to his previous school, P.S.71, the whole time. Fiammetta and his mother conducted secret meetings for about a year. “My father probably wouldn’t have preferred it, so we just did it behind his back for a while,” Fiammetta said. Eventually his father found out, but allowed the meetings to go on anyway. But after about a year Fiammetta’s mother disappeared again – leaving her abusive boyfriend in the process, Fiammetta later learned – and hasn’t contacted her son since.

This incident was just the beginning of Fiammetta’s family problems. He used to have a good relationship with his father, but when a stepmother came into the picture, things changed. All of a sudden there were a lot of arguments, fights, “just things that didn’t make sense,” Fiammetta said. “My father wouldn’t say no to her,” he said. “But he would say no to me. And, you know, he took sides. He took the wrong side at the time.” After a few years Fiammetta just got fed up with everything. He ran.

After running away a few times and once getting kicked out, Fiammetta made up his mind to leave and never go back to his father’s house. “I basically just lived with a couple of friends of mine,” he said.

In May of 2006, Fiammetta and his friends were picked up by the police for cutting school. He was taken back to his parents’, finding out that there was a missing person’s file on him. “The cops thought that it was kind of shady that my parents filed a missing persons report on me about 20 days after I got kicked out,” he said. “My dad, being the stubborn person that he is, argued with the cops, had a smart mouth, and got arrested along with his wife. That’s how I ended up in foster care.”

Fiammetta lived in a group home by Belleview Hospital in Manhattan. He lived there for about a week and a half until they found a foster mother for him. He moved to Southern Boulevard in the Bronx to live with her. “At first it was good,” he said. “During the summer she wasn’t demanding, she let me go out whenever I wanted to; she gave me this allowance, and even allowed my habits of smoking and drinking, so it was pretty good.”

But with the change of seasons, in the winter things got bad for Fiammetta once again. His foster mother began to think of him as worthless and incompetent, he said. She changed completely for reasons unknown to him. “She stopped giving me the allowance that I was supposed to get,” he said. “I never complained about it, never would tell her, ‘Hey, where’s my allowance that you owe me?’ I never would. I just accepted it for what it was.”

That’s basically how that ended. She got fed up with Fiammetta and sent him to Middletown, New York, to live with a new foster family. Fiammetta just couldn’t handle it up there. “I’m a city boy,” he said conclusively. “I can’t stay out of the city and I can’t be a county kid, where, you know, a grocery store is like a mile away from my house. I couldn’t do that.”

After only two days of living upstate, Fiammetta called his father to whom he started talking again while in foster care. “He seemed to understand his mistakes and he was working on it,” Fiammetta Jr. said. His father wired him some money and Eddie returned to the Bronx.

He gave his social worker a call to let her know that he was alright and was sent to live with his friend Max in Harlem. “I didn’t prefer living in Harlem,” he said. “It wasn’t that spacious, the place wasn’t meant for more than four people and it just wasn’t my kind of thing.” Deciding his best option was to go back to his parents, he moved back in with them in their home in Morrison, the Bronx, and that’s where he’s been residing for the past two-and-a-half months.

"It’s had its off moments, but just a few,” Fiammetta said, referring to life with his father and stepmother. “It’s way different now,” he concedes. “They changed for the better, so far.”

Still it’s only a temporary situation until Fiammetta turns 18 next January. He’s not exactly sure what he plans to do with his life, but Fiammetta is sure that he’ll be living on his own.

Even though he’s had a hard childhood, Fiammetta doesn’t let it bring him down. Just like any other teenager, he hangs out with his many friends, plays sports, video games, and just likes to have fun. He drinks, but says it has nothing to do with a “troubled past,” It’s just for fun. Although the smoking, he says, is to deal with all the stress he’s endured over the years, but he plans to quit that one day.

Currently Fiammetta is working at Yankee Stadium, selling food and drinks at a concession stand, but plans to try for his G.E.D again. He says that pure laziness is what stopped him from completing it before, but now “I’ll start fresh,” he decided. “I’ll do better this time and I’ll get it done.”