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Being Poor

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they're what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there's not an $800 car in America that's worth a damn.

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 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 living next to the freeway.

Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.

Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn't mind when you ask for help.

Being poor is off-brand toys.

Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.

Being poor is knowing you can't leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.

Being poor is hoping your kids don't have a growth spurt.

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.

Being poor is Goodwill underwear.

Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is your kid's school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.

Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.

Being poor is relying on people who don't give a damn about you.

Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.

Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger's trash.

Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw.

Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find someone you trust to watch your kids.

Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she'll probably just laugh at your clothes.

Being poor is hoping you'll be invited for dinner.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is your kid's teacher assuming you don't have any books in your home.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.

Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually stupid.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually lazy.

Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.

Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn't bought first.

Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that's two extra packages for every dollar.

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old.

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you're being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.

Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.

Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.

Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won't listen to you beg them against doing so.

Being poor is a cough that doesn't go away.

Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.

Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.

Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

Being poor is running in place.

Being poor is people wondering why you didn't leave.

well, here you cant buy a half-decente used car for less than 3500US$, so being poor in the US is much better than being poor here

I bet you could buy a piece of shit for $800 that would run for a few months.

No way. Cars are much more expensive here.

I think the writer has never been poor.

To me there's two types of poor;
1. Been beat dwn by the sytem poor where you stop making the sacrifices required to get out of being poor,
2. Situational poor where you are making the sacrifices required to stop being poor.

There's lots that can be done to help the latter group. Helping the former group is harder as the have to learn or be taught to help themselves.

I know I've been situational poor to finish my undergrad but didn't care really. Was for only a year and a half or so and I had no dependants. But it sure taught me to have a back up plan and a back up back up plan at all times. Being poor sucks and is too hard to get out of to not have a back up plan or two to ensure I don't become poor.

I think you're wrong.

*EDIT* At the very least, he intimately knows people who have been poor, because some of the things he wrote simply can't spring from the imagination of someone who has not been there, I'm sure.

From my time being poor and the poor people I know they just aren't as self-pitying as this writer.

"Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends' houses but never has friends over to yours." Give me a break. My condo is quite seriously 1/10 the cost of some of my kid's friends homes, they all hanfg out at our place because it's home to them as well. They don't complain about no cable, that's for sure.

"Being poor is off-brand toys." Boo-hoo.

"Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you." I've always been happy with a roof over my head, but then again I always knew better times were ahead.

"Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find someone you trust to watch your kids." This has nothing to do with being poor, this has to do with not having good friends.

"Being poor is not talking to that girl because she'll probably just laugh at your clothes." Give me a break.

"Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap." This is also socialized health care in Canada.

"Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old." It's not like people weren't telling you, or that you shouldn't have known better.

Too much of this is self-pitying.

Being poor is hoping that the food pantry doesn't recognize you and know that this is your fourth trip.

David, you've stooped to a new level of pathetic.

Being poor was thinking that cheap noodles and ketchup was almost like spaghetti (which you couldn't afford).

Being poor was occasionally walking home the ten miles from school a couple times a week, saving the $1.50 in bus fair, so that you could maybe have a beer with your friends.

You too, dude. If there's nothing in this that makes you feel anything, then you're a worthless waste of carbon.

Yup. A worthless waste of carbon that's dedicated to helping people that are actually poor.

So you feel nothing?

Not for "poor" American's. David, what you posted is a total hack piece. The only person it would make "feel" anything are people that can't think critically, or people that have no idea what poverty is.

A lot of these aren't "poor" at all.
Some of these poke at our shitty society.
Some happen to the most upper middle class people in society.
The rest are exaggerations.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that these are notions of poverty, or the fact that in a nation with SO MUCH OPPORTUNITY and so much access to education, we still have people that are percieved to be as poor.

And we all know how people end up being poor.

by being a self-righteous prick?

no?

damn, I thought I might be onto something...

One could only hope...

i grew up poor; growing up i thought my family was the only one that went through this.


i don't see many exaggerations on this list, there a lot of people out there who are just struggling to get by and hide the shame in that. there are lot of kids out there with parents who have no clue on how to raise a child and let their kids suffer through a lot of waht is on this list.

the mortgage payment on the house i grew up in was $112 a month, we were threatened with foreclosure a few times until we got bailed out by my grandparents.

That's a failure of society though. A failure of shitty parenting. There's no excuse for half of these kids to be in such situations in the first place.

but kids are stuck in these situations. a 10-year-old doesn't understand a failure of society, and i wouldn't use that term to describe my upbringing either. i was poor.