Unwritten Rules of Being Poor
An article in Buzzfeed today caught my eye. People Are Revealing Their Unwritten Rules Of Being Poor, And It's A Must-Read If You've Always Lived Comfortably (9 Feb 2021). It's a listicle drawn from a Reddit discussion this week. One redditor asked people who grew up poor, "What were the unwritten expectations of your world growing up?"
The article caught my eye because I grew up in a poor family. Granted, we weren't the poorest of the poor. There was always food on the table at mealtime, though it was almost always cheap, and visits from the sheriff to serve warning of eviction for unpaid bills were rare. Still, at least ten of the rules on the list resonated as lessons I very much learned growing up. Here are Five Things: four rules from the list, plus a bonus one I'd add to the list myself.
1. "Take care of your stuff and keep it nice because you're not getting more of it if you break it."
I'll start off with a rule that doesn't sound like a bad one to live by. Who'd argue against taking care of your stuff? The downside is the stress that comes from knowing that however minor a thing is, you need to treat it like gold because you may not get another one. That creates an anxiety about even using a thing that's consumable, like a box of chalk. As a 7-year-old given a box of chalk on a summer day I had to consider how much chalk to use drawing hopscotch boxes, sidewalk art, etc. vs. how much to save for the next week and the week after- because I knew I was only going to get one box of chalk all summer. And then imagine how disheartening it was to see that, while I wasn't looking, my little sister picked up a rock and crushed my chalk into crumbs because she didn't understand anything beyond the current moment.
2. "If your shoes don't require duct tape, you don't need new shoes."
As a kid I routinely wore clothes until they had holes in them. There wasn't money to replace them sooner. That went for shoes, too. My shoes always had holes in the toes, or the sides, or the soles, or all three, before being replaced. We had no duct tape, though- that was too much of a luxury! (My parents believed it was a gimmick and we'd just waste it. They obviously paid no attention to how I rationed chalk!)
I remember running for Student Council President in 5th grade and standing up on the stage in front of the whole school- 500 students- to give a speech about my candidacy, with my toes literally poking out through my sneakers on both feet. I got new shoes the day after that because my mother had come to school to see my speech and was mortified about my toes poking out right where everyone could see them up on the stage.
3. "Keep your aspirations to yourself. Telling anyone in your household/social strata about your plans to get out and do better may be met with bitterness and downright ridicule. People will call you uppity for wanting to go to school or stupid for having a career goal that isn't modest and local and vaguely dead-end."
My family lived in a working class neighborhood. That made living near the poverty line less of a contrast because most of our neighbors weren't far ahead of us. Still, they tended to have things we did not. Starting with shoes without holes in them. One thing we did have, though, was a middle class mindset. Education was always valued in our family, and going to university to earn a degree and get a good job was always the expectation. That was different from many of our neighbors, who had a just-get-by attitude toward life.
The just-get-by types were hostile to anyone aspiring to do better than them. As if to justify their kids' C- grades and their dead-end, subsistence jobs they sneered at anyone excelling academically. Yes, I said their kids... because this derision came not just from my childhood peers but their parents, too. Adults in my neighborhood bullied me when I earned the top score on a standardized test in my elementary school. So, like the rule above says, I learned to keep my mouth shut about academic accomplishments and career goals.
For the record, I didn't boast about my score on that test- I couldn't, because I was actually the last to know! The scores went straight to our parents, and my mom told other parents because she was so proud of me. I didn't learn about how well I'd done until the neighbor-lady across the street sneered at me in front of her kids, my friends. "I'll bet you feel you're so much better than everyone else, Mr. Smarty-pants! I'll bet you think you're a genius. Do you even know what an I.Q. is?" I didn't; I was 8. "Well, you can't really be that smart, then," she taunted. Yes, a grown-ass woman bashing an 8-year-old for doing well in school!
As my accomplishments grew over the years I grew ever more distant, personally if not physically, from the dullards, slackers, and proud idiots in my neighborhood. Like the rule quoted above implies, I stopped talking to any of them. We had nothing in common anyway other than mathematically similar addresses. By that point I didn't even go to the same school as I had tested into a magnet high school for science and technology.
Later, though, the sense of alienation turned into melancholy. Having less and less in common with anyone from my neighborhood became sad. I remember bumping into Kevin, one of my best friends from 4th or 5th grade, when I was 19. I had finished 2½ years of college and was working a professional job. I owned a new car and wore a suit and tie to work as a systems analyst for a big company. Kevin worked at a local gas station as a mechanic's helper. Understand, I respect people who work in skilled trades. It's honest work, it takes real skill, and it can pay enough money to support a family. But Kevin wasn't a mechanic; he was an odd-job boy. He did menial stuff like oil changes and mounting tires. He wasn't in a training program or apprenticeship to earn a certification; he was just floating along on a slightly-above-minimum-wage salary, hoping- with absolutely no concrete plan- that something better might come along some day. Kevin, who'd been like the big brother I never had when I was a kid, had become like my ne'er-do-well cousin.
4. "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 its own. I am in my late 30s with full insurance and still have a hangup about going for medical care."
Trips to the doctor were rare growing up in my family. Like the quote above suggests, unless it was an acute problem like a 104° fever or a broken bone, the rule was to tough it out for a few days and see it goes away on its own.
Part of the situation, obviously, was that medical care was expensive relative to my family's means. My dad had insurance through his job but it was essentially a high-deductible plan. The out-of-pocket for a simple office visit was equivalent to a $100 co-pay in today's (2021) dollars. At $100 a pop, when you can't even afford to keep your kids in solid shoes... yeah, you're not taking your kids to the doctor for every scrape and cough.
While the cost of medical bills was part of the limitation it was not the only part. The other part was the cost of even getting to the doctor's office in the first place. That's where I'll add a rule of my own to the list:
5. "Going anywhere is difficult, and if one goes, everyone goes."
How do you get to the doctor's office? You drive, right? What if you don't have a car? For many years my parents could afford only one car. My dad needed it to drive to work. That meant doctor visits were only for illness severe enough to be worth the cost and hassle of hiring a taxi (waaay different in the suburbs from big-city business/entertainment districts) or begging help from a neighbor.
Next, what do you do about the other kids? Even when my mom had a car available, the challenge still was having to pack up the whole crew. For many years my parents couldn't/wouldn't leave us home alone because either the oldest wasn't old enough or the youngest was too young. Babysitters were expensive (remember, we didn't even have hole-free shoes), and you know what happens when you drag a bunch of kids to the waiting room at the doctor's office? At least one of them who wasn't sick before catches something from all the kids coughing, sneezing, drooling, etc. while waiting for an hour or longer.
The hassle factor of taking the whole family anywhere limited other activities, too. Things as simple as a trip to the public library became major efforts that were only granted a few times a year. Drop the older kids off at a movie? Ha ha, the younger ones would be in the car and would spend the whole rest of the day crying once they saw their older siblings were getting to go to a movie and they weren't. Join a sports team? Your practice schedule needs to work for everybody, because they're going to be sitting in the car at the ball field 3 nights a week while you're at practice. Past some point you get so tired of hearing, "No" or, "Yes, but..." with an untenable requirement, you stop asking.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/29024.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
The article caught my eye because I grew up in a poor family. Granted, we weren't the poorest of the poor. There was always food on the table at mealtime, though it was almost always cheap, and visits from the sheriff to serve warning of eviction for unpaid bills were rare. Still, at least ten of the rules on the list resonated as lessons I very much learned growing up. Here are Five Things: four rules from the list, plus a bonus one I'd add to the list myself.
1. "Take care of your stuff and keep it nice because you're not getting more of it if you break it."
I'll start off with a rule that doesn't sound like a bad one to live by. Who'd argue against taking care of your stuff? The downside is the stress that comes from knowing that however minor a thing is, you need to treat it like gold because you may not get another one. That creates an anxiety about even using a thing that's consumable, like a box of chalk. As a 7-year-old given a box of chalk on a summer day I had to consider how much chalk to use drawing hopscotch boxes, sidewalk art, etc. vs. how much to save for the next week and the week after- because I knew I was only going to get one box of chalk all summer. And then imagine how disheartening it was to see that, while I wasn't looking, my little sister picked up a rock and crushed my chalk into crumbs because she didn't understand anything beyond the current moment.
2. "If your shoes don't require duct tape, you don't need new shoes."
As a kid I routinely wore clothes until they had holes in them. There wasn't money to replace them sooner. That went for shoes, too. My shoes always had holes in the toes, or the sides, or the soles, or all three, before being replaced. We had no duct tape, though- that was too much of a luxury! (My parents believed it was a gimmick and we'd just waste it. They obviously paid no attention to how I rationed chalk!)
I remember running for Student Council President in 5th grade and standing up on the stage in front of the whole school- 500 students- to give a speech about my candidacy, with my toes literally poking out through my sneakers on both feet. I got new shoes the day after that because my mother had come to school to see my speech and was mortified about my toes poking out right where everyone could see them up on the stage.
3. "Keep your aspirations to yourself. Telling anyone in your household/social strata about your plans to get out and do better may be met with bitterness and downright ridicule. People will call you uppity for wanting to go to school or stupid for having a career goal that isn't modest and local and vaguely dead-end."
My family lived in a working class neighborhood. That made living near the poverty line less of a contrast because most of our neighbors weren't far ahead of us. Still, they tended to have things we did not. Starting with shoes without holes in them. One thing we did have, though, was a middle class mindset. Education was always valued in our family, and going to university to earn a degree and get a good job was always the expectation. That was different from many of our neighbors, who had a just-get-by attitude toward life.
The just-get-by types were hostile to anyone aspiring to do better than them. As if to justify their kids' C- grades and their dead-end, subsistence jobs they sneered at anyone excelling academically. Yes, I said their kids... because this derision came not just from my childhood peers but their parents, too. Adults in my neighborhood bullied me when I earned the top score on a standardized test in my elementary school. So, like the rule above says, I learned to keep my mouth shut about academic accomplishments and career goals.
For the record, I didn't boast about my score on that test- I couldn't, because I was actually the last to know! The scores went straight to our parents, and my mom told other parents because she was so proud of me. I didn't learn about how well I'd done until the neighbor-lady across the street sneered at me in front of her kids, my friends. "I'll bet you feel you're so much better than everyone else, Mr. Smarty-pants! I'll bet you think you're a genius. Do you even know what an I.Q. is?" I didn't; I was 8. "Well, you can't really be that smart, then," she taunted. Yes, a grown-ass woman bashing an 8-year-old for doing well in school!
As my accomplishments grew over the years I grew ever more distant, personally if not physically, from the dullards, slackers, and proud idiots in my neighborhood. Like the rule quoted above implies, I stopped talking to any of them. We had nothing in common anyway other than mathematically similar addresses. By that point I didn't even go to the same school as I had tested into a magnet high school for science and technology.
Later, though, the sense of alienation turned into melancholy. Having less and less in common with anyone from my neighborhood became sad. I remember bumping into Kevin, one of my best friends from 4th or 5th grade, when I was 19. I had finished 2½ years of college and was working a professional job. I owned a new car and wore a suit and tie to work as a systems analyst for a big company. Kevin worked at a local gas station as a mechanic's helper. Understand, I respect people who work in skilled trades. It's honest work, it takes real skill, and it can pay enough money to support a family. But Kevin wasn't a mechanic; he was an odd-job boy. He did menial stuff like oil changes and mounting tires. He wasn't in a training program or apprenticeship to earn a certification; he was just floating along on a slightly-above-minimum-wage salary, hoping- with absolutely no concrete plan- that something better might come along some day. Kevin, who'd been like the big brother I never had when I was a kid, had become like my ne'er-do-well cousin.
4. "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 its own. I am in my late 30s with full insurance and still have a hangup about going for medical care."
Trips to the doctor were rare growing up in my family. Like the quote above suggests, unless it was an acute problem like a 104° fever or a broken bone, the rule was to tough it out for a few days and see it goes away on its own.
Part of the situation, obviously, was that medical care was expensive relative to my family's means. My dad had insurance through his job but it was essentially a high-deductible plan. The out-of-pocket for a simple office visit was equivalent to a $100 co-pay in today's (2021) dollars. At $100 a pop, when you can't even afford to keep your kids in solid shoes... yeah, you're not taking your kids to the doctor for every scrape and cough.
While the cost of medical bills was part of the limitation it was not the only part. The other part was the cost of even getting to the doctor's office in the first place. That's where I'll add a rule of my own to the list:
5. "Going anywhere is difficult, and if one goes, everyone goes."
How do you get to the doctor's office? You drive, right? What if you don't have a car? For many years my parents could afford only one car. My dad needed it to drive to work. That meant doctor visits were only for illness severe enough to be worth the cost and hassle of hiring a taxi (waaay different in the suburbs from big-city business/entertainment districts) or begging help from a neighbor.
Next, what do you do about the other kids? Even when my mom had a car available, the challenge still was having to pack up the whole crew. For many years my parents couldn't/wouldn't leave us home alone because either the oldest wasn't old enough or the youngest was too young. Babysitters were expensive (remember, we didn't even have hole-free shoes), and you know what happens when you drag a bunch of kids to the waiting room at the doctor's office? At least one of them who wasn't sick before catches something from all the kids coughing, sneezing, drooling, etc. while waiting for an hour or longer.
The hassle factor of taking the whole family anywhere limited other activities, too. Things as simple as a trip to the public library became major efforts that were only granted a few times a year. Drop the older kids off at a movie? Ha ha, the younger ones would be in the car and would spend the whole rest of the day crying once they saw their older siblings were getting to go to a movie and they weren't. Join a sports team? Your practice schedule needs to work for everybody, because they're going to be sitting in the car at the ball field 3 nights a week while you're at practice. Past some point you get so tired of hearing, "No" or, "Yes, but..." with an untenable requirement, you stop asking.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/29024.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]