pride

In the last few days, I’ve had passing thoughts about pride and what it means to people.

Pride can get in the way of people truly relating to each other. Pride can keep you from stopping the love of your life from walking away. Pride can make you reject help that you need. Pride just seems to get in the way most of the time. I couldn’t think of an instance where it was actually helpful to someone. So I had been tossing around ideas for a blog post where I would denounce pride as a pointless emotion.

Today, I read this piece of writing called Being Poor. A lot of other blogs seem to have referenced it in terms of trying to get middle class America to understand what it was to be poor and how that related to the situation that many New Orleans people found themselves in in the wake of the evacuation order.

I had forgotten what it was to be poor. By that, I mean that I could still recall the existence of the feeling of being poor, but I could not really recall the actual feelings. Some of the items brought it back.

Being poor in America seems absurd to some people outside of the US. Being poor in the US is very different from being poor in a third world country. I can only discuss what it was to be poor in the US.

I saw the following in the comments section. These are the ones I could relate to the most because they applied to me or my parents, even if the details are not exactly he same.

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 fighting with someone you love because they misplaced a $15 dollar check.

Being poor is a sick, dreadful feeling of your stomach dropping out when the phone rings, because you know it’s a bill collector and you know you’ll pick it up anyway on a one in a million chance someone does want to hire you.

Being poor is knowing that no matter how hard and how much you work, you still can’t cover it all.

Being poor means never forgeting that the bills aren’t paid.

Being poor is like being an alcoholic (but about money). You’re always aware where your last dollar came from, where your next dollar is coming from and exactly how many dollars you (don’t) have.

Growing up poor is spending the rest of your life trying to escape (and never realizing that you have).

Being poor means that you’re the richest person in your family when you’re a grad student.

Being poor means being grateful that you’re living paycheck to paycheck.

Being poor means knowing viscerally the difference between poverty and struggling middle class.

Being poor is getting your school clothes from the trunk of a community outreach car and hope they fit better than last years.

Being poor is a motivator to never be as poor as your parents.

Being poor makes you appreciate everything you’ve earned.

Being poor gives you the ability to look at supporting your still poor mother as an honor not a burden.

Being poor is looking back and wondering how you survived.

Being poor is worrying that someday you will wake up, find yourself lying beneath a blanket in the back of that station wagon and realizing that your escape and rise was just a dream.

Being poor means swallowing your pride and walking into the food stamp office because you don’t want your kids to go hungry, then sitting there smiling, while some social worker (gleefully) humiliates you as she goes over your application.

Being poor is wondering what sort of fool drops a penny on the ground and doesn’t pick it up.

Being poor means having your life gone over with a fine tooth comb to see if you’re bad enough to help.

Being poor is losing your special lunch card and seeing the snotty kid across the street find it, chop it up with scissors, and return the pieces to you.

Being poor takes time. Time to wait in line for the reduced-price clinic while gathering all your paperwork, and hoping you have it in order so you won’t be sent home to get one little slip of paperwork.

Being poor means that if you pull yourself up and stop being ‘poor,’ you will still be struggling and behind, because a large chunk of your money will go toward cleaning up all the stopgaps, mistakes, and overcharges you accumulated when you were poor.

Being poor means that three years after you’re not poor anymore, you still know exactly what everything costs; you still feel like a dinner at Chili’s or even Wendy’s is a huge splurge; and you still feel like you can’t afford to buy a six dollar belt at Target. And you still buy ramen.

Being poor is always stealing toilet paper and tampons.

Being poor is knowing baby powder sprinkled in your hair means one more day it isn’t so greasy you’ve got to try to wash your hair in freezing water in the middle of winter.

Being poor is grinning at memories that this post has brought up, rather than describing it as ‘heartbreaking’.

Being poor means not being able to afford the $10 co-pay at the free clinic.

Being poor means that you can’t even scrape together enough change to ride the bus to the neonatal clinic, and it’s the middle of summer and too far to walk.

Being poor means pondering an abortion because you know everybody around you is equally strapped for cash, you only get one meal a day, and you don’t see that changing in the immediate future.

Being poor means after much tears and thought, when you finally decide to have the abortion, you have to borrow the money to get it done.

being poor is feeling all the eyes judging you, measuring you, and coming to the conclusion that you don’t belong; when all you want is to be away in the comfortable place you don’t have.

being poor is never to be introduced in a non-condescendent way.

being poor is spending the money your parents and brother saved to go to find work in new york, as everybody’s hero; and crying over the phone saying everything is fine.

being poor is seeing your parents work a month to make what converts to five hundred dollars. and support a family with that, and dream.

being poor is not having the dollars to buy your freedom.

being poor is mom and dad being humiliated saturday and sunday to pay your failed attempt at the american dream, because first you’re not american, second you are not rich, third you are not america educated, and all those dollar-master slavering world wonderpeople can tell you, making fun, is: born in the wrong country pal, hahaha.

being poor is working hard and never had worked enough.

being poor is paying a debt to the rich for being born in their world.

Being poor means hanging out your used paper towels to dry.

Being poor makes you appreciate the value of free napkins, plastic food utensils, matches, condiment packages, plastic bags, or any other giveaway item of use in the home.

Being poor means never having leftovers.

Being poor is not having any margin for error. The problem is that life only rarely lets people get through it without error.

This is getting too long. So I will stop quoting from the list.

When I was fifteen or sixteen, my dad became unemployed for the first of what was many years, and half a year later, at Xmas, we received a mysterious box of presents on our front porch. At the time, being a prideful teenager, I was incandescent with rage, because you know, we weren’t THAT poor. And yet at the same time, I felt guilt, because I knew that it would ease the Xmas burden on my parents and whoever had done it was just trying to be nice. I just felt reminded of my poverty.

I remember that pride. I knew we were poor, but I didn’t want others to know and for them to point it out. I wanted to pretend that I didn’t need it so others wouldn’t know how bad things were. Was it useful? Not really. But it keeps you from crying all the time and wanting to give up and feeling worthless. So maybe it was useful.

It’s hard to describe the memories of being poor. It’s a constant awareness that every penny that you have to spend on something is a penny that you can’t put toward something else. I remember that my dad brought home a box of expired snacks that were going to be trashed at a store he worked at briefly. We were so excited, digging through the treats. I remember bags of clothing we’d get from charity where nothing would fit, but it didn’t dampen our enthusiasm at getting “new” stuff. I used to go over my friends’ and relatives’ houses, and stare in awe at their books and toys. I would want to touch them, but I was too afraid of getting in trouble. I hated going into stores because they would always watch me like I was going to take something and even though I wasn’t, I was filled with shame that they saw me that way. I always had my sleeves rolled up and didn’t wear bulky clothing into stores because I was afraid they would stop me.

I lied. Because I did steal at some point. When I was in the 3rd grade, I stole some pencils and erasers from the store because I had run out of them for school and I didn’t want to tell my parents that I needed more stuff because I knew they couldn’t afford it.

I remember having lice and not being able to get any medication to get rid of it. My mom would comb through our hair, removing them and their eggs, softly crying and pretending not to be, trying to crack jokes so we didn’t understand how much this sucked.

I remember when my mom was pregnant my senior year of high school and we had to take the bus to the free clinic that was over an hour away. We’d get to the appointment on time and wait 2 or 3 more hours with the others who were waiting, and get shuffled through to get her checkup. I remember the nurses and doctors kept thinking it was me that was pregnant because they were used to seeing young mothers.

I remember getting my first visit to the dentist senior year of my high school using my medicaid dental card because admittance to college meant that they wanted medical records. She was nice until I embarrassedly presented my medicaid card, then she was terse and dismissive. I got a root canal and a temporary filling that I didn’t know was temporary until 5 years later when I went to a dentist after I got my first full-time job. She was horrified that the other dentist just gave me temps and never called me in to get a crown.

I remember my family living in a roach-filled studio apartment where we were late with the rent several times. We’d have to turn out the lights and be quiet when anyone knocked on the door because we were terrified it would be the landlord and that we’d be thrown out.

The thing I remember the most was the dearth of information we had. There was a sense of not having options. Living as an upper middle class professional in the internet industry has made me savvy to so many things that I had no idea about in the past. People on this side of the fence think so many things are obvious and that poor people are stupid for stuff like cashing checks for fees and getting high interest credit cards and only paying the minimum. It’s not that most/all of them are stupid; it’s that they don’t have options. From where I stand right now, it’s easy to say, well, the bank only charges a couple of dollars in fees per month (fees that are waived if you have direct deposit in most cases) or point out that an extra $5 per credit card payment can go a long way, but if they are trying to figure out that those $5 could maybe feed themselves or a dependent for a week, then it’s not so easy.

I wrecked my credit in college. When I say that, people often roll their eyes and ask me what the hell I was thinking. Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking when I went on my shopping sprees. Oh fuck off. I hoarded and spent every penny like it was my last. When I needed to fly down to Philly because my mom was sick, I had no choice but to put it on my credit card. When I needed to buy books for classes, I didn’t have any choice but to put it on my credit card. Even then, I didn’t get some books because I figured I could just borrow them from the library. I worked and saved to pay my rent and utilities and buy the cheapest food possible. I wanted to be like the other kids who could call home for more money, but I knew they were strapped and I didn’t want to stress them out. So do I take the $10 and pay my minimum credit card payment, or do I eat? I ate.

I remember my parents working themselves to the bone, 7 days a week, from before we got up until around 10pm many nights. And I remember the feeling that all that work wasn’t getting them anywhere.

The other feeling I remember from being poor is constant terror that what you do have will be taken away at any second. Someone could come to collect it. You could be robbed. You could have a medical emergency. Someone could charge you a fee and you wouldn’t know if it was valid but you’d have no way to fight it. You try to grasp every little thing you can and wonder if you are not taking advantage of someone in some way, then someone must be taking advantage of you. You worry that people would make you leave the nice places that you are at, even though it’s a public place.

I am lucky to have been able to get away. I am lucky that I was considered smart, that my parents made sure they did all they could to make sure I went to college. I faced a lot of humiliating, alienating, oppressive racism, but not the kind that made people assume I was stupid and lazy and criminal upon meeting me, like many black Americans have to face on a day-to-day basis. I knew my self-worth. I made it out. And many of my friends did too. But some haven’t because they were not as lucky as me, even though they were as hard-working as me.

I think I am writing this so I will remember. But I don’t know what that will accomplish.