Being Poor - as read on the Mike Malloy show:

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

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.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

[midnight]

1. Guy Whitey Corngood this is so painfully right on the money.....

Time to bailout the poor.... No more corporate welfare!

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

3. It really moved me when I heard it earlier. nt

[ikojo]

2. This was my experience growing up...

Free school lunch
Free shoes provided by some charity when I was in the second grade
Being 9 years old and KNOWING exactly which envelope contained that month's child support check (a check that stopped coming regularly once the sperm donor moved to Florida)
Calling my mom at work to tell her the child support check arrived, knowing we'd have milk that night.
Wearing my coat to bed because the heat had been turned off
Listening to the All Star Game on the battery powered radio because the electricity had been turned off.



Thus the life of a lower middle class child of divorce growing up in the 1970s.

And people wonder why I have NEVER wanted kids!

[4 t 4]

8. One of the big differences of being poor now,

and during the depression is we are all so mixed. That can be good and bad. During the depression almost everyone was poor. Now on any given block,in almost any part of the country, on almost any street, you have really really wealthy and really really poor. I believe it must have been easier when everyone was in it together but now? I see people get delivery of 50" tv's and I can hardly eat the way I want. This is not right. Not right at all. It shows you how out of touch this country is with just what we use to stand for. There is no reason in the world that children go to bed hungry and some own many homes other than GREED and the start of the awful, awful policies of the Reagen start of the whole horrible idea

[Fumesucker]

4. Being poor is driving a $50 car for 75,000 miles

And then selling it for $75..

Being poor is living in a tent for three months with your wife and three year old child so that you could save the deposit for a crappy apartment..

I've done both of those.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

5. How are things now? If i may ask. n/t

[Fumesucker]

10. We own our home, but are hanging on by our fingernails, we have about ten years left.

On a thirty year (fixed rate, thank the IPU) mortgage.

We're now driving a $900 car. :)

I have a bicycle I use to get around, my wife uses the car.

Thankfully I'm a skilled shade tree mechanic or we would probably not be driving at all.

And our youngest grandkid is now older than our daughter was when we lived in the tent.

We've had good years and bad years, seems that the older you get the fewer people want to hire you so I've basically been self employed for quite while now.

All in all though, life is pretty good.. We pretty much have our health, although we do have medical bills from three emergency surgeries not covered by insurance that we will probably never be able to pay off.

Thanks for you interest.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

12. Thank you for sharing. I've always thought that being the richest

country in the world there is no reason for people to go through that. But I guess taking care of our own would make us socialist or something scary like that.

[Maine-ah]

18. I lived in a tent and a ford pinto

with 2 parents, and 3 sibling for four months while my father built a house in 1977.

I lived in a 300 a month house, with out a full bathroom for 3 years to save enough to buy a house. My shower was in the greenhouse and a toilet off of the kitchen.

[eilen]

6. Being poor is sending the kids to three different houses to "borrow an egg"

Being poor is hearing "expecting a flood?" every day because you're wearing high water toughskins that your brother grew out of last year.

Being poor means spaghetti twice a week.

Being poor makes sure the gallon of milk lasts a whole week in a family of 6 and you never eat the "last one" of anything.

Being poor is when your clothes are rusty from the well water because we can't afford water conditioner.

Being poor is knowing winter is over because that is when the power company shuts you off.

Being poor is missing your Mom because she works two jobs and getting mad when she is on the phone at dinner because that is the only time you ever see her.

[Warpy]

7. I've been most of those places

and the light in this room is a lamp I picked out of the trash and rewired and then stuck a cheap paper shade on.

Poor is waiting for all sorts of pain to go away and trying learn how to live with it if it doesn't.

Poor is getting black shoes because you know when they start to get really scuffed up you can take care of it with a Sharpie at work.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

9. Proud to be fifth to K and R

Off to the greatest page.

Been livin' there and doin' that for almost three years now.

[travelingtypist]

11. Never had kids b/c that was my life growing up.

And my mom now wonders why in my life as making I think is okay,
money, about $30K as a single person, I never worry about what
stuff costs. If I want something, I buy it, and I never look at
the price.

I almost couldn't finish reading that it was so painful.

[ehrnst]

13. We need leaders who understand what poor really is, and means.

Even if they don't experience it firsthand, I want them to "get it."

Obama's experience with service to the community gives him that.

I see NOTHING of compassion or understanding coming from McCain.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

19. "I see NOTHING of compassion or understanding coming from McCain."

And you won't any time soon. He loves to drop the phrase "He doesn't understand." No it's you Johnny boy who doesn't get it.

[Heather MC]

14. being poor is when your teenage summer Job contributes to the household

[Lyric]

17. Being poor is dropping out of school as a honors student

because your job is the ONLY income, and you need to work overtime on night shift for the extra 35 cent differential.

*sigh*

My Mom had a heart attack when I was seventeen. I worked for years in a factory, full-time on nightshift, to take care of her and my younger siblings while she recovered. Dad was dead. We were on our own.

I got my GED a year and a half ago, and I am working on my third semester in college now--at 29 years old. 4.0 GPA last semester, and I've already won two writing awards and had two pieces of writing published.

I still live in a trailer, and we only have heat in one room. I just keep telling myself...a few more years. Just a little more waiting, and a lot more work. But the Food Stamps don't go so far these days. If not for the little bit of help we get, I honestly don't know where we'd be right now.

:hug:

[Mad_Dem_X]

15. I had to go cry in the ladies' room after reading this.

Jesus...

[wvbygod]

16. Being really poor is...

not being able to tell anyone how poor you are.