One thing about my town on a sunny weekend day - we get tourists. We have a fantastic walkway along the Columbia that is well maintained with lots of great views. I like to watch as people gather and disperse up and down the stream of macadam.
There are benches and trolley stops, picnic tables and shady banks; lots of places where the flow of walkers, bikers, dogs and kids eddy and swirl in the sunny steady wind coming from the ocean. Last night I saw teen girls huddled and whispering at the memorial reading Tarot cards for each other. The River Walk leads a life of its own that runs through the heart of the town.
I had a conversation along there today with a young woman about the Florida/Missouri drug testing poor people today. It was rather interesting.
It was calm and polite - though the beginning seemed iffy; when I challenged her assumption that "everyone knows it's a good idea" - she didn't quite understand that you can have a rational conversation about your ideas without trying to convert the other person. Or that I might be interested in why she thought the way she did since I hold a different opinion. In hindsight that kind of depresses me.
Once we got past that little barrier it rapidly got more complicated for her, but I was nice. Really. Like you wouldn't believe it was me nice. But there were some questions she couldn't answer:
1. Who pays for the negative tests?
1.a. How much does that cost per year?
1.b. Will it actually save money?
2. How do you "catch" alcoholics you are sure are abusing the system?
2.a. Who will pay for that?
3. What happens to minors or relatives who live in a home with someone who's benefits are terminated?
3.a. Who pays for that?
She wanted "the government" to do something - to spend money - to catch all these people she is certain are just milking the system and wasting her tax dollars. It didn't matter to her how much it cost, it was the principle of the thing. There were cheaters and they needed to be punished. To take their children away to make them work to get them back. And yet she also said that government benefits were a trap designed to keep people using them and unwilling to get off - so people had to avoid them if they were smart. But she didn't know where the money should come from, they just don't deserve her help being addicts and all. And she shouldn't have to pay for it because her mother never used them as a single parent.
Then we talked a little about economic hardship and work situations and lack of them, when she confided in me she had been downsized from her part time job, but since she had a husband who takes care of her it wasn't a problem.
There was a complete disconnect in her mind from her childhood in a single parent home and anyone who wasn't in her economic class. Well sure, she knew other people in her neigbourhood who were latchkey kids too - but it was different than what we were talking about.
So I asked how it was different. She grasped for words, looking at me occasionally as if I might help her.
"Well.... you know...."
No, I don't know. I was actually a kid with a stay at home mum until I was in high school. Her gaze searches my face again as if I have a cue card on my fivehead.
"They....."
"I don't think I have a real answer to that question. Maybe I should think about it a little more."
I hope she does.