Comments Lounge
Okay, in case I didn't love you enough already...I REALLY love you now.
Ev
Beautiful. Thank you, flea.
Hey, was that dental visit the same day you ran into my friends and me at the Kopi?
And do you know if First Family takes kids' public aid for new patients? I'm not sure the mom of one of Ben's friends has found a dentist for her son yet, and that office is right off the Clark bus so it'd be an easy trip for them.
I like that cashier.
Orange, I think so. KidCare is Illinois' universal health care, and First Family Dental takes it. Either way, it can't hurt to call and ask.
Aww, Flea.
Thank you for sharing this part of your life with us. I'm currently trying to claw my way back into middle-class stability...it had been a short stay anyway, but long enough for me to realize that dang, so many reasons why people will kill to keep it.
Flea, this was just beautiful. I so get it.
As always Flea, thanks from all of us who drop in.
I found this blog yesterday through Margalit's link to the embarrassing moments post.
Last night I was spitting iced tea onto my computer screen from laughing. Today I'm leaking tears from this and the previous post.
Thank you for this wet rollercoaster ride!
Thank you for your clear and vital voice.
Thank you.
Wow, I'm teary as well.
God bless that woman. It's amazing how the world divides itself up into the compassionate and the NOT when you are going through hard times.
Flea~you caught the situation so well, I felt as if I were there with you. I know exactly how you felt. I wish we were in middle class stableness more like middle class instability.
Great Blog!
Dammit you made me cry. Sniff.
This has me weeping.
Beautiful and well-written. I was feeling guilty because part I has stayed with me all day and I hadn't commented. And so I must comment now. It is amazing how so many things that seem, perhaps, annoying for the middle class are huge and overwhelming when the money is not there.
Thank you for writing it down and sharing.
Powerful stuff.
What the others said! (erm did I mention I was n't so eloquent?) Really a moving story.
See that's why I always appreciated that the store that took our WIC certificates was open 24 hours a day. At 1 or 2 in the morning there really aren't all that many people at the store, makes things much easier.
WOW! I totally feel your pain. I too have been in the same situation as you with the house. I emailed you quite a while back offering you my services as an appraiser and if I had known what you were dealing with as far as how close to the edge you were I would have pushed more because while I don't have the good sense to do things the right way I know people that could have helped steer you better than you were. The house was saved, but now I am divorced and trying to unload the damn thing in a down market.
The saving grace for me has always been my side gig selling beer at the ballpark and if I can just tread water until April rolls around every year, baseball provides a nice band-aid over my financial problems. That didn't happen this year so I have more empathy for you than I care to have.
BTW, I got screwed out of working the Police concerts so not only will I not be able to see the concert for my favorite price, I will also not be able to hook you up with a cold beer.
Beautiful.
I, too, have great teeth for a poor person, after being hounded about my freakishly unhealthy middle class mouth.
Wow. Thank you flea. All that and you manage to write so beautifully. And answer emails from persons such as myself when my email, in context, was an uninformed, privileged whine.
Best of luck as you continue to move forward.
Dammit, I've been teary and hormonal all morning and you got me weepy all over again!
I've been "grad school poor" all of my adult life and it's definitely not romantic and after being this way so long my hope is waning. Now that I make too much money to get food stamps, I really miss them. Medicaid, not so much.
Hey, have you discovered the beauty of freecyle yet? Freecycle.org. If it weren't for freecycle, I wouldn't have any furniture.
Live long and prosper!
Awww. My nose is running now, and it ain't the allergins...
Your Dominick's cashier is a gem. Tell the management every time you see them.
And thank you for the post.
Your post hits me on so many levels. Thanks for writing it.
You are amazing, and you do so much for others by sharing your writing this way.
I walk this line, but since we don't have kids, we are still secure....I think.
I love it when family and friends say I'm being cheap, when I'm just trying to keep us in the black with preventative maintenance of the wallet.
Keep on, woman! I would LOVE to run into you at Kopi!
oh Flea, you've done it again and I find myself without a kleenex handy. Thank you for writing this.. it's nice to have it put in perspective.
You're so not alone. Hubby and I just bought a fixer-upper house with a down payment from my parents in order to get out of the rental racket. Aparently in TX there aren't any limits to how much they can raise your rent. 15% was too much for our budget. Now we are trying to get by on my grad student stipend and hubby's $8/hr part time job.
I'm scared everyday that something will happen to me or my job.
Thanks for the distinction between poor poor and grad school poor. I'm a college-educated person in my mid-20s, so I know a lot of people who don't make much money, but it's by choice, which I think is another important difference. Like, they could get a different job and have more money because of it; and they don't, because they care about farming or theater or grad school or whatever, but they can. I also teach at a school with a lot of people (older students and people's parents) who don't have that option, for whom whatever job they have is really important.
I described your story about the evil cashier and the good cashier to a friend, a fairly observant, very progressive Jew. He said that the Talmud has a teaching that if you embarrass a person in public, it's as if you had killed them. The violence is that bad.
I'm glad things are somewhat better for you now, and I hope new carpet days come soon.
Thank you so much for these two posts.
I'm currently in a financial rough patch that, while in no way as dramatic as yours, has similar potential for both long-term ruin and short-term humiliation. Sometimes I feel like I will ALWAYS live paycheck to paycheck, or worse, overdraft fee to overdraft fee.
It's reassuring to see that despite the way it feels, I'm not alone, and I'm not a bad person.
and to North, above -- I don't entirely agree. "coulda, woulda, shoulda" in terms of career choice or type of degree doesn't really work when ConEd turns you off, or when all you can afford to buy at the grocery store is ramen noodles. True, being of the middle class (and having family and friends who are still there) can make it slightly less hopeless. but it doesn't make it any less real.
of course this doesn't go for people who face a "slumming" kind of poverty. and of course people who make less money doing something they love are miles ahead of people who make less money at mind-numbring drudgery. but again, when it comes time to pay the bills, red is red. Verizon and Keyspan don't make exceptions for holders of liberal arts degrees.
My husband works for a healthcare company and part of his job is to get people on medicaid. He used to be pretty conservative and vote republican. I think his eyes have been open in a way that I never thought possible. I love the fact that he is gentle and sensitive to these families and does the best he can to help them get the help they need. He get's pissed off from time to time about the system and some of his clients but he pushes his clients and his county workers to do the right thing.
This was a brilliant post as noted from all those above. I just want to say that there are people who do have money who do care and who happily pay taxes and give money away. And do not believe in humiliating people for whatever reason and would like to give a big piece of mind to those who are unfeeling and downright cruel. Your story is inspiring and your strength of character is a powerful reminder that people can be amazing.
Amazing posts. Thank you for writing them.
I have to think that people who belittle other people about their circumstances have lives filled with fear. Afraid they are not as important as they think they are, afraid of the mirror you are holding up for them to look into. How sad they must be.
This is a good reminder of why I take the time to look people in the eye and thank them when they do something for me and to remember, there but for the grace of a higher power and life in general, go I.
Roxy, I wasn't talking about being long-term down that path as much as the people I'm around who can pretty easily get out of whatever situation they're in (and a lot of it is that most of my friends don't have kids). That was me last year and will likely be me in another year or two. And yeah, either way you're poor. Grad school poor isn't not poor, it's just different.
*sigh*
Yeah.
In addition to this entry, a book I read a few years ago was also very eloquent on the topic of poverty - David K. Shipler's "The Working Poor: Invisible in America." (I promise, it's not as dry as it sounds.) This book, along with Barbara Ehrenreich's works, get into the nitty-gritty of everyday life while sunk in a financial hole; and how so many catch-22's are out there that keep folks from advancing. Oh, the government can make it very, very hard to become working- or middle-class, as I'm sure you're aware.
Off-topic, today I picked up a new book by Guy Delisle (Pyongyang!). This one follows him while working in China - it's called "Shenzhen."
I also ordered "My Happy Life," as per your recommendation - it arrives next week.
YAY Cashier! There are good people everywhere, Flea. There are also some we're not so sure about:
http://sticknits.typepad.com/sti...07/
friends.html
But keep believing. Please. I am going to try to keep believing too.
I just got home from the first night of the Police concert. It was pretty freaking awesome. Enjoy the show.
Add my voice to the chorus of "wow" here.
Also - I wonder if the nastiness or malicious cluelessness from some people comes from fear: "OMG, she was middle-class, she was like me, if it happened to her it could happen to me, therefore it must be *her* fault.".
Not excusing at all, however.
Everybody should have to experience poor just for a while, but more importantly everybody should make it out of poor.
Seriously, you have to stop it. I can’t be here, at work, reading your blog (I know, at work), crying in my office.
As a kid I was live-in-a-bus-and-be-a-hippie-in-Utah poor, poor-Southern-and-fucked-in-Mississippi poor, as a teen I was punk-rock-antiestablishment poor, and later in life, single-mother-no-job-no-hope poor. I’ve also had brief moments of middle class life and twice, upper class.
I’m OK now. I went to school (I still go to school because I love it!) and now I work as a financial aid counselor at a local community college because I know what a difference it made to me. I’m still not well off, and I still struggle to support my family but now we have hope and I get to do work that I love and that feels valuable.
I can’t tell you how closely your own accounting of your experience mirrors my own feels of hopelessness, anger, fear and shame. Thank you for telling your story in a way that I can’t tell mine. Hopefully it will open the eyes of a few people.
I read this yesterday and it has stuck with me. When the kids were little I recieved food stamps and WIC and always felt really embarrassed. It was awful, but definitely a good lesson in compassion. Whenever I see anyone using a link card (I live in IL, too, Peoria area) or WIC I make sure I smile and hope they can see the "I've been there" in my eyes... I always felt people were judging me, assuming I was a single mom or lazy.
My thoughts are with you and your family.
Strong, flea. You are strong.
You made it through the needless shaming that Americans do to poor people, with 2 little kids counting on you.
I don't know if it's the capitalism or what, but we seem to be pretty mean about people who are unlucky enough to run out of money. So much for there but for the grace of God. I think it's true that all of us are about 3 twists of fate away from homelessness.
Oh, dear. I can't imagine the stupid cruelty and cruel stupidity you've gone through, and that you've been so insightful and funny and strong throughout.
If you need anything let me know, and I'll do what I can.
Flea~You've won an award. Please check it out at www.janicenw.blogspot.com
CONGRATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bluepaintedred linked me here. What a beautiful story. I can remember when hubby and I first started out in the Coast Guard with two children, we received food stamps. At that time, you received the actual funny money, and the base exchange accepted them. That was really something. You used the exchange because the money went further, but you know what, they were use to it. The sad part is they still are.
Flea, as usual, this is a beautiful, touching, and damn-well-written story.
When I was growing up, there were many circumstances that kept knocking my family back.... and back... and back. Among other things, we got our housing grabbed out from under us when the place my parents were renting was repossessed. Thank goodness for people like your cashier - my person was my first-grade teacher.
She figured out that I never went out for recess in winter because I didn't have a coat - I ran the block and a half to school in layers, and it just took too much hassle to get back in them and out of them at recess time. I sat in the hallway reading one morning, and Mrs. A came back into the hall carrying something. She crouched down next to me and handed me a blue parka. "Go on out and play - it's a beautiful day out there," she whispered. I tried to give it back to her when I left for lunch, but she put it back on my coat hook. We moved from Way North to Way South the following spring, so I grew out of the coat quickly, but I reveled in the warmth of its down and the warmth of Mrs. A's care that entire winter.
Great post, as always.
I can completely relate to that cashier. I work as a pharmacy technician in a location that is populated by 95 percent extremely wealthy retirees. A lot of them have the (mistaken) notion that we techs are either pharmacists in training or paid similarly to nurses or lab techs. We make about the same as workers at McDonald's. And for that we get told we are worthless, that we are idiots, are cursed at, yelled at, have our car windows broken out, and have mentally unstable people threaten to be waiting for us in the parking lot with knives.
An old man ripped in to me one time for an insurance problem that we couldn't fix on our end. "This is what you get paid the big bucks for?" He said, spitefully. I had to hide behind the cabinets to hide my crying.
Of course, I could get another job. But I need the health insurance and it's hard to find a well paying job that will work around a school schedule.
The only things that have protected me this past year are luck (in big heaping spoonsful) and only having to worry about me.
And i want to track down that cashier and hug her.
wonderful post!
FWIW, I have only ever been grad-school poor; although I struggled a bit in college and lived cheaply, my parents always sent me an extra $50 if I whined enough. Lord knows where they got it though.
Anyway, you struck something in me. I was a grocery store cashier many years ago, and we had WIC and food stamp customers, and I sure hope I didn't treat them badly. I honestly can't remember, but I am sure I snickered at least once. It was probably self-righteousness (get a job!), embarrassment and just plain not knowing what they are going through.
So, truly, thanks for all this.
You captured the feelings so many face in today's economy. Thank you...
Astounding. Thank you.
Incredible writing, of course, Flea.
Two things.
1) "There but for the Grace of God . . ."
This sentiment reflected by many commenters has always troubled me. It seems to me to imply that those in dire straits are lacking God's Grace, or are being subjected to hardship by a diety. And that cuts a little too close to "you must deserve it," or "everything happens for a reason" for my comfort. It all skirts on blaming the victim.
2) The Secret. Not everybody is as into it as Oprah, of course, but I think a lot of people do a little of it semi-counsciously.
Povery and bad luck might be contagious! If I turn my face upwards, that's the way I'm headed.
Speaking of the sorry state of health care in the U.S., we saw Michael Moore's Sicko last night. Don't miss it - too bad Moore is largely preaching to the choir.
But for dignity, you can't beat Howard Brown Health Services. http://www.howardbrown.org/hb_se...vices.asp?
id=35
On a side note, to Sarahlynn's point: I do some volunteering with indigent folks and I leave there completely humbled. I use TBFTGOG to describe my feelings, mainly to have a quick 'n' dirty way that people understand it's all a fluke how one ends up. Especially because I'm athiest, is there a more apt cliche?
This made me cry a bit, LA.
Too often these days, people can have a way of just destroying our faith in the humanity of others. Fortunately, there are people out there like Susan to restore it again.
Wonderful.
T
You know this already, but I adore you. If you were a guy, I'd totally go down on you. And I am way too tired to be in the mood. 
Wow.
Fifteen years after college, I'm still looking for the stability in "middle-class stability". We have so far held onto middle class, but it's been a fight every step of the way and one that's still ongoing. I'm so with you on the carpet. When we have enough saved to replace the carpet, I'll know we're at least two steps from the precipice.
I've never understood why so many people respond to people being in a low place by throwing rocks at them. Like being humiliated and downtrodden is some necessary aspect of being poor. Isn't being poor hard enough by itself?
I remember vividly the moment when I realized it wasn't MY FAULT that I was poor and in debt and had lost everything and had to hole up in my dad's house. And I was so relieved I cried. And then I was angry. A righteous anger that I can use to this day.
Thank you for sharing this, flea. I was on WIC twice and food stamps once. We lived a long way from any city, so I shopped once every two to three weeks. This was before they came out with cards, so I had to pull out my booklets. Depending on the cashier, I either got the eye-rolling disdain or the equally insulting "wow, you buy really healthy food!"
We're struggling to keep a fingerhold on the lower middle class, but it's not easy, and I know how fast it can head south. Thanks again for giving eloquent voice to the working poor.
"wow, you buy really healthy food!"
which is a variation on "Your children are so clean!" or "Wow, you take care of your teeth!"
I know, it sucks.
Thank you for sharing your story. I had tears in my eyes reading your post about things kids say, and this brought them to my eyes yet again.
Thank you so much for this and for the previous post. I came here originally because a friend told me about the parenting story contest, but continued down to read this post and the other "Broke" post and well... I can so relate.
My husband and I are lucky that our straits were never nearly so dire as yours, but... we've spent a lot of the last few years very very scared, and have had to deal with all kinds of things we never once considered.
Thank you so much for speaking so frankly about your situation and for how your perceived economic status changes how people will treat you, be they friend, family, or stranger; liberal or conservative, religious or atheist.
Thank you.
These were really great posts. I could find myself in a similar position soon, and it was like you were saying everything would be okay.
My father was a dab hand at math and accounting when I was a kid, so even when we were lower-middle-class-barely, my sister and I never noticed. This year, my first year post-college and post-scholarship-dollars was a definitely painful learning experience.
I couldn't afford the organic, imported foods I used to nosh on; lunch was, for eight straight months, an apple, baby carrots, and kroger-brand-peanut-butter and bread. I was lucky enough to work in food service, so the other component to my diet was croissants and pizza because they were free from the places I worked. I felt sickly and exhausted all the time; not just by the 60-plus hours a week I worked at three different jobs [none of them minimum wage] but by the lack of wholesome nutrients.
I wasn't allowed to leave the house, because that offered the option of spending money. I read library books, I didn't go to parties, I didn't go out, I didn't meet people for coffee or for dinner, I didn't have friends over, I didn't smoke, and I didn't drink, unless a server poured me a free beer at work.
i read a lot of library books; watched lots of library DVDs. I stayed at home under my electric blanket with 3 or 4 layers of clothes, able to refrigerate milk on my bedroom floor.
I didn't know anyone poor like me; I felt so alone and so empty. All the people, all the food, all the happiness seemed so far out of range as I looked at my paychecks and tried to scrape them into some manner of payments for all of the medical bills I had stacked up. I would pay for gas for my car with pocket change, neatly stacked, I would take my tips to the bank to pay my electric bills.
Indiana has something similar, a Hoosier Works card that is scan-able; I was shocked to discover how many people used it during a brief stint at an organic grocery. Also, by the fact that they carefully bought the most nutrient-dense foods of anyone.
Thank you, flea, for sharing this. It was beautifully written and your blog has made me giggle even in the freezing cold, eating another stale croissant.
Amazing story, flea.
I was just wondering, though. Why have you gone back to middle class dentistry?
My wife and I are doing quite well these days, but we still use the inner city rehab-and-aids medical clinic we used when we were students. Sure, a suburban doc would be more convenient. We just prefer to support a business that we know will be there for us if the boom goes to bust and takes us with it.
Flea,
Thank you for that heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece. You are a fabulously talented writer, the kind who can suck you in, produce out-loud laughter one minute, and sobs the next. The last time that happened to me as a reader was on a plane, where I was totally absorbed in William Styron's "Sophie's Choice".
Brava, madame.
-Penelope
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