Being Poor

[Summersmom360]

Being Poor

Published by John Scalzi at 12:14 am

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they're what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there's not an $800 car in America that's worth a damn.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends' houses but never has friends over to yours.

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won't hear you say "I get free lunch" when you get to the cashier.

Being poor is living next to the freeway.

Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.

Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn't mind when you ask for help.

Being poor is off-brand toys.

Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.

Being poor is knowing you can't leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.

Being poor is hoping your kids don't have a growth spurt.

Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn't have make dinner tonight because you're not hungry anyway.

Being poor is Goodwill underwear.

Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is your kid's school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.

Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.

Being poor is relying on people who don't give a damn about you.

Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.

Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger's trash.

Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw.

Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find someone you trust to watch your kids.

Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she'll probably just laugh at your clothes.

Being poor is hoping you'll be invited for dinner.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is your kid's teacher assuming you don't have any books in your home.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.

Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually stupid.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually lazy.

Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.

Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn't bought first.

Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that's two extra packages for every dollar.

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old.

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you're being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.

Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.

Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.

Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won't listen to you beg them against doing so.

Being poor is a cough that doesn't go away.

Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.

Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.

Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

Being poor is running in place.

Being poor is people wondering why you didn't leave.

 

 

480 responses so far

480 Responses to "Being Poor"

1. # mythagoon 03 Sep 2005 at 12:27 am

   Thank you, John.

2. # uhuraon 03 Sep 2005 at 12:39 am

   Thank You.

3. # Bruce Arthurson 03 Sep 2005 at 12:59 am

   "Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away."

   That one raised some memories. Back during my Army stint, I met a fair number of people who had joined the military, not for the training, not for the steady income, not for three hots and a cot each day, not for the GI Bill, but because the military would repair or replace the teeth rotting away in their head. Having bad teeth is one of THE major indicators of living in poverty.

4. # Sonion 03 Sep 2005 at 1:02 am

   From someone who's been there, and can still see it in the rear-view mirror, these are dead on. If I might add a few from personal experience (the * ones are from my mom's POV, with the kids being me and my sibs) -

   *Being poor is your kids getting excited on Dumpster-hunt day, because that's the only time they get to eat "real food" like cookies, fresh fruit and desserts.

   *Being poor is staying with a man who beats your kids because you can't afford to keep them out of foster care without his salary.

   Being poor means making decisions like "is stealing food a sin" outside of an ethics class.

   *Being poor is scrambling under the car seats to make up enough change to get two happy meals to split between a family of 4 - and everyone is ecstatic when you do so.

   Being poor is realizing that heating and eating will probably be mutually exclusive this month.

   *Being poor is find that your landlord has tied $20 to your steering wheel out of pity.

   Being poor is finally realizing that when your Mom says you can be anything you want, she doesn't really believe it, but feels she has to keep saying it anyway to keep the whole family from falling into despair-based lifestyles.

   Being poor is learning to live with condemned-quality housing because coming up with the first and last month's rent, plus utility deposits, you'd need to move is a pipe dream.

   Being poor is discovering that that letter from Duke University, naming you as one of three advanced students in your class invited to test out of HS early into their scholarship program, is just so much firestarter because the $300 it costs to take the test may as well be $3 million.

   Despair is finally realizing, at nearly 36 and with a barely-afforded AA in English from a community college, just where you could have been by now had you had $300, and what that missed opportunity has truly cost you.

[PTBAAMom]

Jul. 22, 2010 at 8:53 PM

OMG, that really hit close to home, but that last comment..omg...it broke my heart, If we could go back in time I would sell my jewlery or pawn my car and give 300 bucks for that test.

[truthrowan]

Jul. 22, 2010 at 11:39 PM

I'm crying right now, because that's where we are. Stuck in a shit hole of a house unable to move, but can't come up with the money, scrambling to make bills, and only having computers and internet because I'm trying to go to college online to get a bachelors so I can give my family a better life.