Rogue Valley Roasting Co.
12oz Soy Cappuccino
Vegan Pumpkin Bread
All editing and no blogging makes Chandra a something something... I'm just not right in the head unless I'm writing. Which is saying something sad about my standards for being "right in the head."
Okay, firstly - fuck you Kansas. Sorry - fuck you Kansas government. Fuck you on behalf of the people of Kansas and economically disadvantaged people everywhere.
So much for my policy of speaking kindly and open-heartedly to others. And so much for my policy of not using excessive profanity lest I turn away potential listeners. Well, they're more "goals" than "policies" anyway.
What are far worse policies, of course, are the new policies just passed in Kansas regarding public assistance. If you have not heard already, new restrictions were approved that would prohibit people receiving public assistance from using that money on cruises (wait, what?), at movie theaters, nail salons, concert venues, and the like. They have also taken the extra measure of restricting the amount of money Kansans can withdraw from an ATM per day to $25 so they cannot circumvent these prohibitions.
Grr.
I first found out about this because I have FiveThirtyEight.com (statistical smarty-pants people) on my Twitter feed, and they did a break-down of what these restrictions mean. First, there's a $1 fee for every ATM transaction use. So that $25 per day goes down to $24 per day of actual assistance. Second, there's a good chance that the person with the card doesn't have a checking account, meaning they don't have a bank. And if it's not your bank, then the bank that owns that ATM will almost certainly charge a greater fee on top of that first dollar. The average bank fee (they referenced the Government Accountability Office here) is $2.10, bringing the actual amount of assistance received down to $21.90. So, if you don't have a bank (and it's very common for low-income people to not have a checking account), and you're going to have to pay your landlord in cash, they calculate that it would take 28 days of making the maximum withdrawal to pay your $600 rent.
They also show that the maximum monthly benefits for a family of 4 is $497, so they'd only have to make 20 withdrawals to extract all the available assistance. They'd also lose $62 in the process. (And we're assuming magical ATMs here that dispense both singles and coins). So... a family of 4 has to give up an electric bill every month (a spring electric bill, mind you, when the weather is nice and electric usage is way down) so that they don't go to the movies...?
The truth is, poor families don't go to the movies that often, if ever. They cannot afford to divert a cent from all the numerous worries they have to grapple with every day. They don't have $62 to spare - period. And remember that it costs more to be poor, from those extra bank fees and extortionist payday lenders, to the simple inability to buy the bulk pack of toilet paper because you just can't seem to save up enough at one time to buy more than the 4-roll pack. And after all, those food stamp cards don't actually pay for all the food you need for a month (neither do they pay for any sized pack of toilet paper), so you're going to have to dip into that "wild money" the government doles out.
What bullshit.
So, what is the point? What is the actual point? It does not save the Kansas government any money directly to impose these restrictions - the amount issued is the same, just the amount received by the people in need is directly diminished. The theoretical argument is that people who are receiving assistance either will be discouraged by not being able to "indulge" on "the government's" money or will be more focused on spending their money more prudently enabling them to save(?!) enough and they will finally break their cycle of poverty and get back to work. They also think people who are working or already eligible to receive benefits will see that they won't be able to abuse this free money system and will, therefore, decide to stay in their current job or suck it up and go get a job. Thus, they will keep people off The Dole and make them productive tax-paying members of society.
The problem is this is a complete fantasy. There is zero - ZERO - data to support any of these presumptions. Poor people, as a rule, don't even receive enough to get by on government assistance, let alone indulge on it. And if you subtract ANY money from an already inadequate amount, you only exacerbate the problems endemic to the cycle of poverty and make it more likely that the person STAYS ON WELFARE LONGER.
So why do this? Firstly, the only ones sure to make money are the banks. I'm not sure these stereotypes that lead to policies like this would exist if banks were unable to pay for the politicians who put this type of legislation forward. If no one were allowed to make money off of poverty, my guess is we would have an economic structure that made sense and tried to eliminate poverty instead of stoke it.
That is not to say that many of these politicians - and bankers, for that matter - don't believe in these anti-poor people stereotypes. They are in a willful denial about their own culpability into these circumstances - first they create the poverty, then they blame the people who experience it. Poor people aren't poor because they failed - they're poor because they have succeeded in participating in our economy, just the wrong end of it. Poverty in our country, in our time, is not exclusively the result of exceptional circumstances, as it should be, but the expected result of the design.
If you set minimum wage below the cost of living, you build poverty into the very structure of the economy. And remember what the cost of living is. It is not just your month to month cost, which, in almost every place I've lived, minimum wage won't cover for even a single person. Your true cost of living includes savings. We are supposed to be saving up enough money to cover down-payments (for apartments, vehicles, a house someday, right?), deductibles and co-payments, retirement (Ha!), clothing, furniture, our children's education (and down-payments and deductibles...), replacing all the things that wear out over time, and all those other eventualities - the S-sub-h in the equation of life: Shit-happening.
And did you know that, depending on where you live, to receive assistance, you might have to be in some kind of work program which may or, more likely, may not be good for your situation. Or you have to pay back the government for the welfare or other kinds of assistance you received? What asshole came up with that idea? The only thing worse than poverty is debt. Debt is one of the all-time best ways to ensure that someone never gets ahead. Especially when there are no restrictions on the interest rates someone can be charged. And since wages are so very inadequate, debt is pretty much a certainty. Where is that in the Budget now that you're working again?
And what are the numbers for cancer rates in this country? A quick Google search says 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will get cancer. The cost, generally, is in the tens of thousands, even higher, and the patient, by design, should be paying some portion of that. Those numbers are over a lifetime, of course, but there is no timer on cancer, no excluding by race or economic status (though there is a skew that follows race and economic status and your likelihood of recovery). Where is that calculation in the overall equation? And that's just cancer. There are innumerable other ailments that can be permanently debilitating, or temporarily incapacitating.
And where are your dreams in the American financial budget? The idea is that you work extra hard to achieve your dreams - save up enough to start a small business or buy some piece of equipment or tool you need to do something that becomes your life's passion (maybe buying a laptop on credit because you are infected with that crazy American optimism and you think you can actually become a writer). You put in the extra hours of practice or study and you get the pay-off on that investment. That's the sales pitch. That's not the product we own. The reality is that we have been robbed of our capital by people who probably don't even know they are the thieves. Partly, by ourselves.
If our almighty American Work Ethic is our inherent capital to achieve our Dream, then we no longer have the ability to spend that capital on ourselves. We have to work far more than one full-time minimum wage job just to get by in the here and now, and if the smallest stumble keeps you from achieving escape velocity (maybe you developed a mysterious chronic illness at 21 or decided to keep the baby at 30), then you are screwed in the long-run because these numbers are not out-runnable. We cannot save the money to invest in ourselves, and we have no time left to invest in our skills-development, in our families, in our basic human happiness.
People who have personal social nets, people who can lend them money or a safe place to stay for a little while - and a little while is all you need when you have safety nets like that - and people who have already moved on from the lower economic levels, often have nothing but condescension for the people who aren't up there with them. Because they don't know. They honestly just don't know that things are not how they used to be, and maybe they weren't all that great back then.
I know I've said all this before.
Tuesday April 14, 2015
Mellelo Coffee Roasters
Soy Cappuccino
Amaretto Bearclaw
So that was Sunday. I cut my ranting short so we could take the boys to see a movie - their second ever at "the popcorn store." It was a great experience (we saw "Home") except for the giant poster of the evil clown from the new "Poltergeist" movie which was staring at us from all the way down at the end of the long, yellow hallway we had to walk down to get to our movie. Poor Oliver was still sobbing in the theater, til Daddy got him some popcorn and they started the pre-show commercial reel.
(I say "reel" as if they use actual film anymore. Sigh... I miss my theatre days sometimes. I still have an old 3-minute trailer for "Pan's Labyrinth" in a box somewhere that I plan to, one day, unroll from the top of a very big hill. Maybe some time when they have the downtown streets closed for a parade... Hmm... Any-hoo!)
I went back and read one of my first posts ever, "Of Food Stamps and Smart Phones (Part 1?)". I stand behind the premise of my argument, that bullying and shaming the poor is a far worse economic strategy than being supportive and encouraging of people who are struggling because of all the costs that bullying generates. However, something I wrote bothered me a lot:
"If we were to rally around these people - and their smart phones and
their bad choices - and encouraged them, instead of beating them down,
then we would see a return on our investment..."
As if having a smartphone were indicative of poor decision-making. That's not what I meant. Granted, it was late and I was tired, and I am not one to go back and fix things much once the blog has been posted. First, there are all kinds of reasons you might see someone with a food stamp card who also has a smartphone, or a nice car, or even a designer handbag. Chances are, the nice thing was purchased prior to their economic hardships, was purchased cheaply (I have a friend who has to use food stamps because she is unable to work because of a work-related injury, and she actually did find a Prada bag at Goodwill for a dollar. And, having a husband who takes donations at Goodwill, I can say it is totally believable that a less experienced employee failed to recognize it, put it behind glass, and price it accordingly. Most of the time, however, the bag's a knock-off), or was purchased by someone else, maybe for work (because, yes, people on food stamps are more likely to be working than on Welfare) or maybe as a gift. Maybe they inherited the decade-old Mercedes when their grandfather passed away.
And it's pretty damn likely that, unless Grandpa happened to live in town, they didn't get to say good-bye before he was gone, because taking time off during the holiday shopping season and traveling hundreds of miles to make sure you're children got to meet him at least once in their lifetimes - that's a luxury. And if you're poor in Kansas, that's not a decision you can make for yourself anyway.
The bottom line is that nobody owes you a fucking explanation. You don't own a person because you give them a paycheck, or because you happen to not be receiving some kind of government assistance and they are. Chances are, they've been paying into taxes for years prior to whatever circumstances they are experiencing now. Chances are, it won't be very long before they are back to putting money back into the Community Chest, if they aren't right now. Chances are, you are going to be drawing on some kind of government fund or other before too long. That's because that is how our economy is structured to function, and because there is no fundamental difference between who that person is and who you are.
And that's what I meant when I said we need to rally around these people and their bad decisions, because we are all people and we all make our own mistakes. The only difference is that the poor have little to no margin of error and have to be careful to make fewer mistakes than most people.
When I lived with my old roommate in Silicon Valley, he paid more in taxes than I made gross. He was very hard working and very intelligent and deserved his six-figure income. And in some ways, he was more of a fuck-up than I was. The difference was that our opportunities to recover from a mistake, or just a run-of-the-mill eventuality, were not equal. When he got his car towed for unpaid parking tickets, it cost him hundreds of dollars (and one of my afternoons as I drove him from police station to DMV to impound lot), but he got his car back. If I had been so careless (and all he had to do was bring the parking tickets to his employer and they would have paid them!) I would have lost my car and one of my jobs, which would have made it impossible to keep paying off the car loan for the next few years. And the consequences just spiral from there...
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Mix Bakeshop
Decaf Soy Cappuccino
There's one more thing I have to cover before I post this rant of rants: the Fight for $15.
Last Monday, there were strikes across the country by fast food workers and others to rally for a pay increase to $15 an hour and for a union. If you're one of those who think they don't deserve to make that much compared to people who make that much right now, I think you are generally right. But you forget that the only thing keeping those who make $15 an hour now from making what they actually deserve is that those striking now do not make what they deserve.
The screwing of the poor screws the middle class.
If you start minimum wage at the point that reflects the real cost of living, that incorporates the cost of human dignity, then those just getting by on their advanced degrees or privileged career choice (not all of us can or should have to be in tech support) would start to feel more than just a stressed-out "okay" but maybe really satisfied and secure. And, yes, we can afford it. And, yes, the wealthy do deserve to lose some of their money, not because they are inherently nefarious, ill-gotten gains, but because the system which produced that wealth is inherently unfair and skewed to their advantage.
You cannot say that anyone has earned their fair compensation when the economic cost is the health and happiness of millions of other people.
...
Seven years ago, I came back to Ashland to stay. My future husband followed a few weeks later. We cobbled together a few jobs between us and found the cheapest decent apartment we could manage. As we lay in the darkness on our newly-bought $50 bed, I sang "Blue Skies" to him. Because I love irony. And because, deep-down, I am an optimist. I promised him that, despite my panic attacks and forebodings, I would get better and we would be okay. Together, we were going to make it.
After seven years... a lot of the time, I don't feel like I've lived up to that promise. I cry a lot. I spend way, way too much going to coffee shops. But he knows it makes my head better somehow, so he encourages it. And besides, we're not broke because of my coffee habit. We're just going to be broke longer (unless I can make up for it by selling lots and lots of copies of this stuff I've been writing here... wink-wink, nudge-nudge).
Everybody needs something to make being alive worthwhile, to take the edge off life. We are alive now. We don't know how long a lifetime we're going to have, and we don't know how long we're going to be struggling to be okay. You have to have those little bits of joy - whatever it is that gives a little lightness to your being, puts a smile on your lips or a fire in your belly - and you have to have that joy, even when it doesn't fit in your budget. You have to have something or what the hell are we living for? That's not a rationalization to indulge and be irresponsible. But if you don't have something, you just aren't human. We, the Poor, don't need to be taught how to be responsible with our meager income, wherever it's coming from. We need to be trusted to make our own decisions and left alone and not asked to justify our entire life story, of which you have only had the merest glimpse.
Because we are grown-ups, asshat.
But on a day like today, when the skies are ridiculously blue... despite Henry having a meltdown because the doors at the shoe store were not closing properly, and stressing over whether or not we should use the credit card or see how much more we could fit on the debit card, and over how much is left on the food stamp card, and how this one blog has cost three coffee trips... I still feel like I can't complain. Oh, the system is screwed - I'm not going to stop complaining about that. But I have two beautiful, caring children, a faithful and resilient husband, a roof over our heads... and damn fine coffee.
Today, that's enough. I'll keep speaking out. I'll keep trying to be better, to make things better. But I'm going to take today and keep it, too. It's a good day.
But, still, fuck you Kansas.
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Monday, October 6, 2014
Being the Poor Kid
Mix Bakeshop
Soy Cappuccino
Morning Roll
Scrolling through these blog titles, I don't know if I've ever explained being The Poor Kid. I feel like I must have mentioned it along the way, but... I wasn't just poor as a kid. I was The Poor Kid. And I paid for it.
When I was born, my parents were married with two boys ahead of me, and owned their own fledgling businesses. Hippie businesses, of course - health food stores, a juicing company - but job creators, nonetheless. The American Dream, right?
And it fell apart. My mom left while I was still in diapers. My dad borrowed money, trying to keep the businesses afloat as business partners left and employees stole food from inventory and he paid other people to take care of us. And finally, he had to make the decision to let it all go, because he felt it was more important to be the one to raise his own children. The businesses went bankrupt and he filed for welfare. This being the very early eighties, the case, initially, had to be filed under my mother's name because it was so uncommon for the father to be the caregiver.
Soon after, we had to move south to live in my grandparent's home in southern California. Redlands. I still have not fully made my peace with that place. It's blazing hot and dry compared with the beautiful redwood coast of my birth. And it was not a kind place to me.
There's a trade-off, being a poor kid in a well-off neighborhood. You don't have to deal with many of the disadvantages that come with impoverished neighborhoods. It was very safe, clean and well-maintained by the city. And it had a "great school." But you stand out among the well-groomed, healthy "rich" kids. In hindsight, I don't know if they were even rich, or just upper middle-class. They just seemed worlds away from where I was.
I was mixing peanut butter and jelly on a plate because we didn't have bread, while one of my neighbors is putting in a fountain. Kind of big one, too. Our clothes weren't always new, and they certainly weren't stylin'. Our shoes were well-worn before we got new ones. We didn't have a lot in the way of stuff. We were just "without" a lot of things. When things broke, they stayed broken. A broken window, central air or heat. I remember one very cold winter huddled around the lone space heater. I used to ask my dad about financial details, what our bills were, because I was often anxious about what might get shut off next.
It's hard enough to deal with the stress of being poor, even for a kid. Harder still to be aware of what's missing, and how close and how seemingly easy the fix is. It's harder still to be a child hungering for a missing parent, and having the one beside you struggling to fill that need for comfort. Especially when they are so broken, too. I didn't understand the damage for all of us until much later.
And our financial problems were always supposedly temporary. We were always just a month or two from off welfare. My dad was always working on something or other. Sometimes he worked a little under the table - he taught himself everything he could learn about computers and would repair or build them for people. It wasn't enough to earn a living outright, and you can only make a very tiny amount or you are ineligible for assistance. But when my father took an actual full-time job, his pay was garnished (for the money he borrowed trying to keep the businesses afloat) and he actually received less than when we were on welfare.
So, he was always working on some project or other to jump start us out of poverty. My father is an incredibly smart person. I have met few people in my life as smart as him, or with such a strong moral conviction. And the fact that this intelligent man, formerly his own employer, couldn't get us out of our situation ate away at him. I will never forget his face after getting dirty looks in the supermarket for using food stamps. We almost never ate outright junk food, but he had deigned to buy a bottle of grapefruit soda - that had to cost all of $0.59 - and that was a moral outrage to some pious snob in the line behind him.
If he had known how long things were going to stay like that he says he would have done things differently. But temporary things, in my life, have tended go on for years. At least, we were safe. We had a roof over our heads - a house, too! - some food in the fridge, and clothes on our backs. All that really is a privilege, even if I couldn't feel it at the time. And partly, I had a hard time feeling grateful for anything because of that "great school" we went to.
I used to say that I was teased at school. Now, I can call it what it was: bullying. It was relentless psychological torture. From first grade through sixth, I got it every day. Because I stood out. I had the free lunch ticket and not a lot of friends. And because it worked. When the insults started being thrown, the struck hard, probably because I was already down. I wasn't a whole 6 year-old. What I needed was love and support and healing - and confidence. What I got was contempt.
It wasn't just from the kids at school, either. This was the Reagan era and shaming the poor was in the air. Even one of my teachers made the remark in class that poor people, homeless people, really wanted to be that way and they could help themselves if they actually wanted to. They just wanted a hand-out.
I'm amazed her head didn't spontaneously combust under my red hot glare.
I don't remember the first time I thought about suicide, but it was well before that incident. That was 5th grade - it was way before that. Second grade, maybe? I'm kind of glad no one was talking about cutting back then, because that would have been in my brain and I'm not sure I wouldn't have experimented with it. But I never did go through with it, the times I held a knife to my little wrist. Partly, I was afraid of pain, but mostly I thought, "I'm not going to let those fuckers win."
Yep, I even had a potty mouth back then when I was eight.
My parents, of course, had no idea things were that bad. No one did. Because kids don't tell. They don't know the words to express the darkness they're feeling, nor do they know exactly what to ask for. After all, everybody gets "teased." It's not like I was being "bullied" - no one was beating me up. Not physically. And like I said, I was the Poor Kid. I deserved it, didn't I?
All those days I stayed home sick, I wasn't trying to dodge a math test. I was worn out from the stress of having to go to school and put myself through wringer every damn day. I really could make myself sick from it. And putting myself through that crucible changed someone who loves learning into someone who hates the institution that could offer it.
But fifth grade was also a turn-around year. First, my principle bully (who had no idea, years later, why on earth I "hated" him) was not in my class, for the first time since first grade. But more importantly, a group of moms started coming into class every so often to talk about self-esteem. They acted out skits, gave us techniques that I still use today. And I was not too old to love Harmony Bear. I hope they know, wherever they are today, how much they radically improved my whole life.
But still, so much damage was already done. My formative years were not healthy ones. I've come a long, long way from then, but when your foundation is so unsteady, it takes a lot more just to be okay. Still, I don't hate those kids now - not even my old bully. They were just kids. It was just happenstance that they were well-off and I was not. If things had gone differently with my parents, I could have been among them. (Although, that might have meant being raised in an unhappy, dysfunctional marriage, which does its own damage... who knows?).
The parents of those mean kids (some of my classmates were really sweet, by the way) failed them as much as people think my parents failed me because they didn't teach me how to "shake it off" when I was teased. My parents didn't know that I was in a psychological crisis. Their parents didn't know their darlings were contributing to it. Apparently, the kids didn't know it, either. It's difficult to teach lessons you don't know you need to teach.
The first step is acknowledging the behavior for what it is. We've come a long way on that front. But there's still resistance out there. There are people who think stopping the kind of behavior I was subjected to is tantamount to coddling. And that's making us a nation of wusses, too weak, too fragile to handle the harsh realities of life. That really is not the problem we face today. It was the harsh realities of life that made me vulnerable to the abuse. And, really, how resilient is a 6 year-old supposed to be? ...a 7 year-old? ...8 year-old? ...9 year-old? ...10 year-old? ...11 year-old? ...12 year-old?
The persistence of it is what causes the deep, lasting damage, and what distinguishes it as bullying, not banter or occasional teasing among peers. It is also that it takes place between people who are not fully peers - jock to nerd, homophobe to queer, snob to ramenista, to employ a few stereotypes...
Obviously, I read an article that explains that all much better, but, of course, I'm not going to link to it because I'm already more than an hour over my parking limit.
Let me just say, before I post yet another unedited blog (sorry- I'll edit it for the book - yes, that is still happening - no, really), and before I collect another parking ticket... my experience as the Poor Kid infuses my understanding and empathy for the Outsider, but it doesn't make me vindictive. Nor does it keep me from being able to see facts that may be presented from the other side of the discussion. If they are facts. But we have spent so long demagoguing the poor that we have a long way to go to even be in the same conversation. As difficult as it was to live poor, and we were on welfare years longer than most people are, but I still had it way easier than most. And I have the painful privilege of an understanding of the consequences of social policies that other people who have not been poor just cannot have.
Unless they listen. I'll listen too.
And it's time to go.
Soy Cappuccino
Morning Roll
Scrolling through these blog titles, I don't know if I've ever explained being The Poor Kid. I feel like I must have mentioned it along the way, but... I wasn't just poor as a kid. I was The Poor Kid. And I paid for it.
When I was born, my parents were married with two boys ahead of me, and owned their own fledgling businesses. Hippie businesses, of course - health food stores, a juicing company - but job creators, nonetheless. The American Dream, right?
And it fell apart. My mom left while I was still in diapers. My dad borrowed money, trying to keep the businesses afloat as business partners left and employees stole food from inventory and he paid other people to take care of us. And finally, he had to make the decision to let it all go, because he felt it was more important to be the one to raise his own children. The businesses went bankrupt and he filed for welfare. This being the very early eighties, the case, initially, had to be filed under my mother's name because it was so uncommon for the father to be the caregiver.
Soon after, we had to move south to live in my grandparent's home in southern California. Redlands. I still have not fully made my peace with that place. It's blazing hot and dry compared with the beautiful redwood coast of my birth. And it was not a kind place to me.
There's a trade-off, being a poor kid in a well-off neighborhood. You don't have to deal with many of the disadvantages that come with impoverished neighborhoods. It was very safe, clean and well-maintained by the city. And it had a "great school." But you stand out among the well-groomed, healthy "rich" kids. In hindsight, I don't know if they were even rich, or just upper middle-class. They just seemed worlds away from where I was.
I was mixing peanut butter and jelly on a plate because we didn't have bread, while one of my neighbors is putting in a fountain. Kind of big one, too. Our clothes weren't always new, and they certainly weren't stylin'. Our shoes were well-worn before we got new ones. We didn't have a lot in the way of stuff. We were just "without" a lot of things. When things broke, they stayed broken. A broken window, central air or heat. I remember one very cold winter huddled around the lone space heater. I used to ask my dad about financial details, what our bills were, because I was often anxious about what might get shut off next.
It's hard enough to deal with the stress of being poor, even for a kid. Harder still to be aware of what's missing, and how close and how seemingly easy the fix is. It's harder still to be a child hungering for a missing parent, and having the one beside you struggling to fill that need for comfort. Especially when they are so broken, too. I didn't understand the damage for all of us until much later.
And our financial problems were always supposedly temporary. We were always just a month or two from off welfare. My dad was always working on something or other. Sometimes he worked a little under the table - he taught himself everything he could learn about computers and would repair or build them for people. It wasn't enough to earn a living outright, and you can only make a very tiny amount or you are ineligible for assistance. But when my father took an actual full-time job, his pay was garnished (for the money he borrowed trying to keep the businesses afloat) and he actually received less than when we were on welfare.
So, he was always working on some project or other to jump start us out of poverty. My father is an incredibly smart person. I have met few people in my life as smart as him, or with such a strong moral conviction. And the fact that this intelligent man, formerly his own employer, couldn't get us out of our situation ate away at him. I will never forget his face after getting dirty looks in the supermarket for using food stamps. We almost never ate outright junk food, but he had deigned to buy a bottle of grapefruit soda - that had to cost all of $0.59 - and that was a moral outrage to some pious snob in the line behind him.
If he had known how long things were going to stay like that he says he would have done things differently. But temporary things, in my life, have tended go on for years. At least, we were safe. We had a roof over our heads - a house, too! - some food in the fridge, and clothes on our backs. All that really is a privilege, even if I couldn't feel it at the time. And partly, I had a hard time feeling grateful for anything because of that "great school" we went to.
I used to say that I was teased at school. Now, I can call it what it was: bullying. It was relentless psychological torture. From first grade through sixth, I got it every day. Because I stood out. I had the free lunch ticket and not a lot of friends. And because it worked. When the insults started being thrown, the struck hard, probably because I was already down. I wasn't a whole 6 year-old. What I needed was love and support and healing - and confidence. What I got was contempt.
It wasn't just from the kids at school, either. This was the Reagan era and shaming the poor was in the air. Even one of my teachers made the remark in class that poor people, homeless people, really wanted to be that way and they could help themselves if they actually wanted to. They just wanted a hand-out.
I'm amazed her head didn't spontaneously combust under my red hot glare.
I don't remember the first time I thought about suicide, but it was well before that incident. That was 5th grade - it was way before that. Second grade, maybe? I'm kind of glad no one was talking about cutting back then, because that would have been in my brain and I'm not sure I wouldn't have experimented with it. But I never did go through with it, the times I held a knife to my little wrist. Partly, I was afraid of pain, but mostly I thought, "I'm not going to let those fuckers win."
Yep, I even had a potty mouth back then when I was eight.
My parents, of course, had no idea things were that bad. No one did. Because kids don't tell. They don't know the words to express the darkness they're feeling, nor do they know exactly what to ask for. After all, everybody gets "teased." It's not like I was being "bullied" - no one was beating me up. Not physically. And like I said, I was the Poor Kid. I deserved it, didn't I?
All those days I stayed home sick, I wasn't trying to dodge a math test. I was worn out from the stress of having to go to school and put myself through wringer every damn day. I really could make myself sick from it. And putting myself through that crucible changed someone who loves learning into someone who hates the institution that could offer it.
But fifth grade was also a turn-around year. First, my principle bully (who had no idea, years later, why on earth I "hated" him) was not in my class, for the first time since first grade. But more importantly, a group of moms started coming into class every so often to talk about self-esteem. They acted out skits, gave us techniques that I still use today. And I was not too old to love Harmony Bear. I hope they know, wherever they are today, how much they radically improved my whole life.
But still, so much damage was already done. My formative years were not healthy ones. I've come a long, long way from then, but when your foundation is so unsteady, it takes a lot more just to be okay. Still, I don't hate those kids now - not even my old bully. They were just kids. It was just happenstance that they were well-off and I was not. If things had gone differently with my parents, I could have been among them. (Although, that might have meant being raised in an unhappy, dysfunctional marriage, which does its own damage... who knows?).
The parents of those mean kids (some of my classmates were really sweet, by the way) failed them as much as people think my parents failed me because they didn't teach me how to "shake it off" when I was teased. My parents didn't know that I was in a psychological crisis. Their parents didn't know their darlings were contributing to it. Apparently, the kids didn't know it, either. It's difficult to teach lessons you don't know you need to teach.
The first step is acknowledging the behavior for what it is. We've come a long way on that front. But there's still resistance out there. There are people who think stopping the kind of behavior I was subjected to is tantamount to coddling. And that's making us a nation of wusses, too weak, too fragile to handle the harsh realities of life. That really is not the problem we face today. It was the harsh realities of life that made me vulnerable to the abuse. And, really, how resilient is a 6 year-old supposed to be? ...a 7 year-old? ...8 year-old? ...9 year-old? ...10 year-old? ...11 year-old? ...12 year-old?
The persistence of it is what causes the deep, lasting damage, and what distinguishes it as bullying, not banter or occasional teasing among peers. It is also that it takes place between people who are not fully peers - jock to nerd, homophobe to queer, snob to ramenista, to employ a few stereotypes...
Obviously, I read an article that explains that all much better, but, of course, I'm not going to link to it because I'm already more than an hour over my parking limit.
Let me just say, before I post yet another unedited blog (sorry- I'll edit it for the book - yes, that is still happening - no, really), and before I collect another parking ticket... my experience as the Poor Kid infuses my understanding and empathy for the Outsider, but it doesn't make me vindictive. Nor does it keep me from being able to see facts that may be presented from the other side of the discussion. If they are facts. But we have spent so long demagoguing the poor that we have a long way to go to even be in the same conversation. As difficult as it was to live poor, and we were on welfare years longer than most people are, but I still had it way easier than most. And I have the painful privilege of an understanding of the consequences of social policies that other people who have not been poor just cannot have.
Unless they listen. I'll listen too.
And it's time to go.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Florence Thompson couldn't live in a house.
Mix Bakeshop
12oz Soy Mocha
Sesame Brown Sugar Cookie
I got the Barenaked Ladies song "If I had a million dollars" stuck in my head, yesterday. I thought it was appropriate since I was catching up on my receipts and figuring out just how financially screwed we are. It is a testament to my addiction that I am back in the coffeehouse today. (Also a testament to how impossible it is to write at home with the boys). Now, if I had a million dollars...
I wouldn't be freaking out over the cost of my mocha habit. I would never again cry over the cost of peanut butter (yes, I have cried over peanut butter). It would be organic everything. Every account would be back in the black. We'd set up college accounts for the boys, of course. I would fix up my little car, pass it on to one of my sibbies - probably my oldest, or youngest, brother - and then I'd splurge on a new car... with four doors.... Luxury...
And then we'd probably pay off the rent and the utilities for six months, maybe a year, and then we'd do nothing. No big shopping sprees, no indulgences... beyond coffee and internet... I would need a little time just to get used to being okay. I have been so strained for so long, I wouldn't know how to deal with security. I would be afraid of possibility... and hope.
Hope is a painful and dangerous thing for someone like me. I didn't realize how much so until one time in a Denny's lobby almost ten years ago. I was on my way out, putting my change away, when I spotted one of those claw machines with all the stuffed animals inside. The prizes were smaller when I was a kid, but I used to win a lot. My brothers and I would walk down to the old Redlands mall with a handful of quarters between us. They'd stretch their game time playing Galaga and Gauntlet and Rampage. I'd play skeeball and the claw machine, and I'd always come home with a prize, sometimes several.
Over the years, claw machines with bigger prizes started moving in next to the machines with the little prizes. The cost was double but you could get a bigger stuffed teddy bear to hug. And soon, the machines with the little prizes disappeared. And I started to notice, when I did drop my quarters in, that less and less often I'd be pulling a prize out. At first I thought it was because, since I still only had a dollar to play with, I had half the number of chances to win. And the prizes were bigger, so they'd be just that much heavier for the claw to hold on to. But it became clear that, no matter how perfect my aim, the claws no longer held fast to the prize. They were made to be more appealing and more impossible to win.
So I had stopped playing.
And at that moment in that Denny's lobby, possessed by a bout of nostalgia, as I started to lift my quarters to the slot, my hand started shaking. My breathing quickened and my chest started to get tight. It was not the excitement of playing a childhood game - it was the fear, the anticipation of certain loss.
Everything in my life has trended the way of the claw machine. The prizes were smaller, once upon a time, but I could win. And if I saved my skeeball tickets, I could cash them in for a really big prize. Now, the cost to play is double, the prizes look huge, and you're almost never going to win because the game has been rigged that way. And that's more than just an unfortunate state of affairs.
The prevalence of failing to succeed - especially, while all the lights are still flashing, telling you that you could still win if you're smart, if you're clever, if you keep practicing - it's damaging. It steals hope. It steals a sense of security. It steals the belief that things can ever change for the better.
People do not respect stress - continual, lifelong stress - and the damage it can do. I am a testament to the damage - physically and mentally. Not only do I get mini-panis at the prospect trying to win something, but I have multiple chronic conditions that are directly related to stress. I've written before about fun times with fibromyalgia, which is either triggered by stress or exacerbated by it. But did I mention I have arthritis in my neck? I'm 35! But my neck is so tight that I have pulled it out of alignment (spondylolisthesis) and am grinding it away.
When my doctor asked why my muscles were so tight, I resisted the urge to look down at my chest and say, "Well, I have a pair of guesses..." I gave him the (bigger) true answer instead - stress. Years and years of it. Unrelenting, with little prospect of things getting better. When he said he was going to submit a referral to a physical therapist, I actually laughed. I've been to this rodeo before. They don't want to pay for the fix. They'll pay for the drugs - the pain killers and the muscle relaxers. They'll pay for those for years. But no p.t., no chiropractic, no acupuncture, and certainly no massage therapy, which probably would be the most effective of all of them. In a little while, I'm going to have a consultation with a pain specialist. And unless I can unlock the Magic Medical Code of Approval, it will probably be my only covered visit, and I won't go to any more out of pocket because, of course, I can't.
Just think of how costly all of this is to all of us. When winning at this economy is impossible, we carry a stress that only compounds, until we're paying so much more than just the price to play. I don't care about the size of the prize, I'd just like to win sometimes.
I know it can be hard to understand for some people. If you've been middle-class most of your life, like my husband, hitting a hard financial stretch is not that big a deal. It's still something that will "work out in the end." Even if you were broke growing up but were able to work hard, get that degree and have a successful career, the damage can be mostly healed and left behind. If you were able to go to school 20 years ago, as opposed to 10 or even 15, you can have a drastic misunderstanding of the burden student loans. The numbers are just not what they used to be, not for education... not for a lot of things... and we are hobbling hope. And there are more and more people like me being created - sick and un-actualized, and needing so much more than even a million dollars can bring.
So... before I post another unedited ramble and rush off to another futile fix attempt with the pain specialist... just remember that, even if you don't understand how stress could be this bad, the damage is real. It's debilitating and it's huge. Just think about Florence Thompson...
Florence was the woman in the iconic picture from the Great Depression. She sat with chin in hand, surrounded by children she could barely feed, eyes faraway, and her face nothing but lines of worry. She lived through greater adversity than most of us today face, but worry is worry, and you don't have to live in the most abject poverty to understand it. You'll be happy to know that things got better for Florence and her children. But the damage had taken its toll on her. According to her children, years later when they tried to get their mother to move into a house, Florence refused. She said she need to have wheels under her. She had been down so long that stability felt more insecure.
I've looked at that famous picture of her for so many years. I've seen the worry, spoken more perfectly on her face than maybe any other has. But I never noticed until recently that Florence Thompson must have been beautiful when she smiled.
As damaged as she was, I hope she could still smile.
12oz Soy Mocha
Sesame Brown Sugar Cookie
I got the Barenaked Ladies song "If I had a million dollars" stuck in my head, yesterday. I thought it was appropriate since I was catching up on my receipts and figuring out just how financially screwed we are. It is a testament to my addiction that I am back in the coffeehouse today. (Also a testament to how impossible it is to write at home with the boys). Now, if I had a million dollars...
I wouldn't be freaking out over the cost of my mocha habit. I would never again cry over the cost of peanut butter (yes, I have cried over peanut butter). It would be organic everything. Every account would be back in the black. We'd set up college accounts for the boys, of course. I would fix up my little car, pass it on to one of my sibbies - probably my oldest, or youngest, brother - and then I'd splurge on a new car... with four doors.... Luxury...
And then we'd probably pay off the rent and the utilities for six months, maybe a year, and then we'd do nothing. No big shopping sprees, no indulgences... beyond coffee and internet... I would need a little time just to get used to being okay. I have been so strained for so long, I wouldn't know how to deal with security. I would be afraid of possibility... and hope.
Hope is a painful and dangerous thing for someone like me. I didn't realize how much so until one time in a Denny's lobby almost ten years ago. I was on my way out, putting my change away, when I spotted one of those claw machines with all the stuffed animals inside. The prizes were smaller when I was a kid, but I used to win a lot. My brothers and I would walk down to the old Redlands mall with a handful of quarters between us. They'd stretch their game time playing Galaga and Gauntlet and Rampage. I'd play skeeball and the claw machine, and I'd always come home with a prize, sometimes several.
Over the years, claw machines with bigger prizes started moving in next to the machines with the little prizes. The cost was double but you could get a bigger stuffed teddy bear to hug. And soon, the machines with the little prizes disappeared. And I started to notice, when I did drop my quarters in, that less and less often I'd be pulling a prize out. At first I thought it was because, since I still only had a dollar to play with, I had half the number of chances to win. And the prizes were bigger, so they'd be just that much heavier for the claw to hold on to. But it became clear that, no matter how perfect my aim, the claws no longer held fast to the prize. They were made to be more appealing and more impossible to win.
So I had stopped playing.
And at that moment in that Denny's lobby, possessed by a bout of nostalgia, as I started to lift my quarters to the slot, my hand started shaking. My breathing quickened and my chest started to get tight. It was not the excitement of playing a childhood game - it was the fear, the anticipation of certain loss.
Everything in my life has trended the way of the claw machine. The prizes were smaller, once upon a time, but I could win. And if I saved my skeeball tickets, I could cash them in for a really big prize. Now, the cost to play is double, the prizes look huge, and you're almost never going to win because the game has been rigged that way. And that's more than just an unfortunate state of affairs.
The prevalence of failing to succeed - especially, while all the lights are still flashing, telling you that you could still win if you're smart, if you're clever, if you keep practicing - it's damaging. It steals hope. It steals a sense of security. It steals the belief that things can ever change for the better.
People do not respect stress - continual, lifelong stress - and the damage it can do. I am a testament to the damage - physically and mentally. Not only do I get mini-panis at the prospect trying to win something, but I have multiple chronic conditions that are directly related to stress. I've written before about fun times with fibromyalgia, which is either triggered by stress or exacerbated by it. But did I mention I have arthritis in my neck? I'm 35! But my neck is so tight that I have pulled it out of alignment (spondylolisthesis) and am grinding it away.
When my doctor asked why my muscles were so tight, I resisted the urge to look down at my chest and say, "Well, I have a pair of guesses..." I gave him the (bigger) true answer instead - stress. Years and years of it. Unrelenting, with little prospect of things getting better. When he said he was going to submit a referral to a physical therapist, I actually laughed. I've been to this rodeo before. They don't want to pay for the fix. They'll pay for the drugs - the pain killers and the muscle relaxers. They'll pay for those for years. But no p.t., no chiropractic, no acupuncture, and certainly no massage therapy, which probably would be the most effective of all of them. In a little while, I'm going to have a consultation with a pain specialist. And unless I can unlock the Magic Medical Code of Approval, it will probably be my only covered visit, and I won't go to any more out of pocket because, of course, I can't.
Just think of how costly all of this is to all of us. When winning at this economy is impossible, we carry a stress that only compounds, until we're paying so much more than just the price to play. I don't care about the size of the prize, I'd just like to win sometimes.
I know it can be hard to understand for some people. If you've been middle-class most of your life, like my husband, hitting a hard financial stretch is not that big a deal. It's still something that will "work out in the end." Even if you were broke growing up but were able to work hard, get that degree and have a successful career, the damage can be mostly healed and left behind. If you were able to go to school 20 years ago, as opposed to 10 or even 15, you can have a drastic misunderstanding of the burden student loans. The numbers are just not what they used to be, not for education... not for a lot of things... and we are hobbling hope. And there are more and more people like me being created - sick and un-actualized, and needing so much more than even a million dollars can bring.
So... before I post another unedited ramble and rush off to another futile fix attempt with the pain specialist... just remember that, even if you don't understand how stress could be this bad, the damage is real. It's debilitating and it's huge. Just think about Florence Thompson...
Florence was the woman in the iconic picture from the Great Depression. She sat with chin in hand, surrounded by children she could barely feed, eyes faraway, and her face nothing but lines of worry. She lived through greater adversity than most of us today face, but worry is worry, and you don't have to live in the most abject poverty to understand it. You'll be happy to know that things got better for Florence and her children. But the damage had taken its toll on her. According to her children, years later when they tried to get their mother to move into a house, Florence refused. She said she need to have wheels under her. She had been down so long that stability felt more insecure.
I've looked at that famous picture of her for so many years. I've seen the worry, spoken more perfectly on her face than maybe any other has. But I never noticed until recently that Florence Thompson must have been beautiful when she smiled.
As damaged as she was, I hope she could still smile.
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