When a friend of mine put this 2005 post from John Scalzi's blog on Facebook this morning, it really hit me hard, in light of some of the things that Mitt and Ann Romney have said lately.
"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."
There is a group of people vying for power right now that doesn't have the slightest idea what it feels like to be hungry, or to be frightened that you aren't going to find five dollars to feed your kids.
I didn't grow up hungry, but I've sure as hell been poor. And every one of these lines rings true. Excerpts below.
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 a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.
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 Goodwill underwear.
Here is the whole piece.
To hear Ann Romney try to empathize with poor, to hear Mitt Romney joke about firing factory workers, or letting Detroit go bankrupt, to know that they have never felt a single one of these sinking pit-of-the-stomach kind of fears, or shames, or the kind of scared you get when you don't really know if you are going to make it...
For some reason, I keep thinking of Reagan, ripping the solar panels off of the White House, turning the mentally ill into the streets, firing the air traffic controllers... as Scalzi would say, "Whatever."
"Being poor is knowing where the shelter is."