Month: June 2021

Growing Up Poor – Rules Of

march_rogue 
We weren’t allowed to do any kind of extra curricular activities. So, no instruments, no joining any kind of sports or girl scouts or anything that required an upfront investment for uniforms or the season. Walmart shoes.

My dad once said I wasn’t really in need of glasses, that I just wanted to look like all my four eyed friends? lol (spoiler alert, totally needed them)

Off brand everything.

Abbreviations-Odd
Keep your hair brushed, your clothes clean, and be articulate and polite in all circumstances. We were not going to be “trash” just because we were poor.

Also, no wearing ripped jeans, even if it’s the style. We’re not spending money on new pants that look like old worn out pants.

ohnoooooooooooooooo
I grew up in a trailer. In fourth grade, a girl was having a birthday party and needed addresses for invitations. The next day she told me her parents uninvited me because I lived in the trailer. That was a new thing I learned I was supposed to be embarrassed about.

I guess just expecting to have to deal with other people’s shitty parents sometimes.

CoolMomInAMinivan
You never brought the field trip permission slips home because you knew better than to make your mom feel guilty she couldn’t pay the $5-20 fee to let you go.

gajillionaire
Going to the doctor isn’t an option until your fever is sustained at 104, a bone is broken, or the tooth rotted and won’t fall out on it’s own.

I am in my late 30’s with full insurance and still have a hangup about going for medical care.

labbykun 2
Paper plate holders were a staple in our house.

A real treat was getting donuts and chocolate milk in the morning.

We knew the exact date of grocery shopping because that’s when the food stamps came in.

Most meals were “experiments” made from the food we got from the food pantry.

We didn’t get next gen. We got a-few-gens-ago gaming systems. And no internet.

Drunk as Mystical State – William James

In a recital like this there is certainly something suggestive of pathology. The next step into mystical states carries us into a realm that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since branded as pathological, though private practice and certain lyric strains of poetry seem still to bear witness to its ideality. I refer to the consciousness produced by intoxicants and anaesthetics, especially by alcohol. The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and of literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so degrading a poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience