photo by me

 

Cross-posted at my main site: life inchoate.

I’ve been listening to the NPR series, Fighting Poverty in America with a great deal of interest.

I think it shows how great the class divides are in this country and how there is a level of classism that is undermining the structure of our society.

I also think that this program is showing how difficult life is to be poor.

As long-time readers know, I grew up poor.  There were times when we lived out of vehicles – a van, an RV, travel trailers.  Not because we wanted to.  Who, in their right mind, would want to live in a travel trailer or an RV (nevermind the van – that was poor)?  Seriously.  There is no room.  I didn’t have running water and had to take sponge baths out of a sink in a local business for a year.  A year.

One of the segments is about education.  One comment was that if you’re poor, your chances of getting out of that are slim.  Very slim.  The Portland Community Colleges are working to help the poor get degrees so they won’t continue the legacy of being poor and won’t pass it down to their own children.

I count my siblings and myself as lucky.  One brother practically has a doctorate.  I’m halfway through my master’s.  One brother is a fireman.  My sister and her husband are doing fairly well.  We got out of that “poor” rut.  We climbed up, rung by dirty rung to make things happen.

But it wasn’t easy.  And we weren’t sure it would happen.

Less than ten years ago, my brother Todd and I were living in a rental in Hungtington Beach, CA, living by the change we could find.  There was a dollar store around the corner and we could buy boxed pasta for 2 for $1.  We lived off of those boxes of pasta for at least 6 months.  It was all we could afford in the very expensive Orange County.

This morning, a worker for the Los Angeles Convention Center said that he considers himself, at about $14 an hour, the rich poor.  He considers himself wealthy in the poor range.

This is where I had always considered myself.  I still have that “poor” mentality even though I make quite a bit more than that man.

I struggle.  I worry.

I probably don’t need to have that “poor” feeling anymore.  I’m firmly in the middle class.

But I still worry.  I think about what would happen if I lost my job tomorrow.  I would have nothing.  I could lose my house within a month or two if I didn’t find a job right away.

And that is scary.