Bernie and Katrina

Okay, I don't want to pretend like I'm suffering. I know people who are and I follow the news, people are hurting.

And it's not because I'm so affluent that I'm beyond all the stuff that happens to the little people. Actually it's quite the contrary. Well not exclusively contrary.

I'm not scraping by poor. But I used to be.

I was a poor 20 year old like many kids sent out on their own, but I was also brought up city-white-poor. It's a lot like city-black-poor, or country-white-poor. Really, I easily and accurately call myself a child who grew up in a family of the working poor. Race and place and irrelevant. We have our ways of dealing with and being dealt with by society.

I continued the legacy, except I was exposed to academia and brain shaping thoughts from the outside, not by actually attending college. I knew it sucked to be me economically and I knew why.

Vegetarian Restaurants and People Who Work at Them

I worked in a vegetarian kitchen for over a decade which employed many earnest young teaching assistants looking to supplement their income by waiting tables or literally slinging veggie hash.* You know the types, the kind that are new to teaching and are on fire with theory? Well bless their poopy little hearts, I was exposed to all kinds of gooey, chewy academic concepts. Of course most of the kids (I say that but I was about the same age, well for the first half of my tenure there) were liberal arts folks. It was a vegetarian restaurant, after all.

Privilege was a topic of conversation often. I had a knock down drag out once justifying the fact that I bought my house, that I was privileged. This from a recent college graduate who thought having her parents pay for her education was a inalienable right. And while home owning is certainly a privilege and I'm grateful for the opportunity, I've scraped to have it.

And I've continued to scrape.

It got better for a heart beat then I went through a separation, or divorce, or whatever you call it when gay people split. But I went from living in one house, two incomes, and three people. To living in one house, one income and me and a half of a child, or a child half the time.

My goal was to save my house.

I worked three jobs and cut out everything. No internet, no cable, no cell phone, little money for groceries, rice and beans, you know the drill. The working poor. Actually, as I see it, when you can't work another hour in the day and you still debate which bills you will not pay that month. You are the working poor.

It has gotten better again. But I'm not part of the investor class, nor are my parents and siblings.
Apparently they're getting beat to hell right now. No, I'm not snickering. I didn't even know they had a name for them until I was polled this past election season and answered "no" to that question.

Today on NPR they were talking about those simple folk who got duped by Bernie Madoff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff and I know it stinks to lose your life savings but the sympathy pouring out my radio reminded me of the sympathy for folks who actually LOST EVERYTHING with Katrina. And as the journalist said, "Mrs so and so is able to stay in her house but she doesn't have money to give her grown children." I thought give me a break. There are people who never had it to give to their kids. There are people who lost what bits they had and are still suffering the after affects.

So rock on lower middle class.

What a good place to be. I grew up in a way where I had to learn to value myself and those around me for who we were, not by our possessions, or we'd never have gotten out of bed. And you know that pile of money that never got saved? Well there's no one lined up trying to take it from me either.

And, Katrina sufferers, I'm still sorry.

*And no, I won't share the recipe. I've gotten away from recipe sharing and there are many resources out there for that.