Class, Privilege, and Social Markers

[Dylan]

Originally Posted by Medusa

I meant to start this thread last week after something that I posted triggered something in me that I wanted to talk about but Im ever the procrastinator so here I am now.

I recently got a promotion at work and was pretty overjoyed and wanted to share the news with my friends. I went in the thread and posted something about getting my promotion and ended up going back and deleting a sentence where I referenced "making more money than I ever have in my life".
When I posted, I was pretty caught up in the joy-moment and felt like I was referencing a new freedom I would experience due to this promotion. When I went back and read my post, I deleted the reference to the salary because I had a sense of shame about talking about "the money".

I was discussing this with a friend and kinda teased it out a little to understand that my moment of shame was a throwback to the first time someone told me it was rude to talk about money. That only very poor people talk about money in this way. Im not really shamed by being seen as poor or talking about growing up on food stamps and homeless at random times.

I definitely grew up in a working class family. I definitely have a relationship with money where I dont have filters about what "should and should not" be talked about. Ive also noticed that people sometimes appear to be uncomfortable when I (or anyone else) talk candidly about getting something for $1 at a yard sale or etc.

With growing up poor, I think that many folks have different social markers and possibly a different access to privilege or even recognizing privilege. I can remember knowing the difference between the kids who had money and the kids who didnt in school, usually based on arbitrary things like clothing and shoes. As an adult, I dont really care how much money people have until Im in a situation where I cant financially keep up with their lifestyle (and here I am talking about being able to travel to expensive places with friends or friends who want to eat out at expensive restaurants)

Anyone wanna talk about this shit?

Great topic. Classism has been an issue in my life since I can remember. I'll spare everyone the 'growing up poor' stories, but I find it interesting how classism is overlooked a lot of times.

I too grew up knowing my 'place' in society. I knew which kids in school had more money and which kids had less money.

I have recently instituted a new rule for my business, and it's class based. I will no longer take jobs from people in a certain (high) class bracket. I've instituted this new policy, because I've noticed a certain attitude I just don't want to deal with.

I've also noticed the way people with money talk about money as opposed to the way people without money talk about it.

Personal pet peeve: the term 'working class'. I find this term a 'whitening up' of the term 'poor'. EVERYONE is working class. Unless you're a trust fund baby, retired, whatnot...you're working class. Poor people know they're poor...whether they work or not, they know they're poor. I also think the term 'working class' creates this illusion that the only poor people are the ones who are 'just being lazy on public benefits', which in turn helps feed the bootstraps theory that the quickest way out of poverty is to 'get a job' or 'work more'...which we all know is bullshit. I think the term 'working class' also negates 'the working poor'.

I don't know exactly what you want to talk about, but I think this is a conversation worth having.


Dylan

[Medusa]

This is interesting to me Dylan, how you and I see the term "working class" differently. I have almost the exact opposite take on it (surprise!). I have always viewed "working class" as a term that kinda equates with "blue collar", as in "the people who actually get their hands dirty".
Albeit, Ive never thought about it in any super depth.

I do know that when I was growing up, I knew the difference between blue collar and white collar even before those terms were introduced to me. My Dad and Step-Dads went to work in jeans and a t-shirt and drove a beat-up Datsuns and old trucks to their jobs. They carried their lunch in a leftover paper sack from the grocery store and mostly came home dirty, sweaty, and grimy.
I remember spending the night with a friend from school one time and her Dad came home from work and was wearing a shirt and tie and drove up in something that I perceived to be a fancy car. He wasnt dirty and they had actual glasses at the dinner table instead of plastic cups from McDonalds.
I also remember my friend having her own room (I shared with a brother and a sister) and how clean everything seemed to be.

I thought of my Dads as "working class" and their Dad as some "other" kind of class. Higher class. Better. Because you know how kids like to compartmentalize and label shit

I do think you have a good point about how saying "working class" instead of "poor" negates the working poor. Its like it creates this invisible barrier where the working poor must not be working hard enough because they are still poor or something. And it probably causes some of that "well they can get a second job at Mcdonalds - They're just lazy!" stuff that people seem to be so fond of.

[Andrew, Jr.]

I think today you are very blessed to have a job no matter what it is. There is nothing wrong with earning a ton of money or min. wage. It is what it is. And that goes along with promotions. If you work hard, and are able to do the work - go for it. There is nothing wrong with that. I always think of the movie "Working Girl" with Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith back in the 80's.

This is a wonderful topic Medusa. Thanks for starting it.

Love,
Andrew

[Medusa]

I'll add another little tidbit in here for something to think about.

It had never occured to me until several years ago that class is not a static thing. That it is interpreted by the person's own experience and process.
For example: A friend of mine a while back used to talk about how poor she was on an almost constant basis. She talked about being poor, about not being able to afford things, about being "working class", and about how important it was for events to be sliding scale. She lived in an apartment in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the entire United States. Her rent on her apartment was more than my mortgage, car payment, utilities, and food costs combined. She taught at a University and had no children and had about 15 years of University education.
She viewed herself as "poor working class" but I often wondered if she ever examined that her ideas on class were burried in privilege. I saw them that way at times.

Im looking at my own ideas and seeing some privileges even in my own views of being poor. Funny how that all intersects.

[Venus007]

I grew up very poor, not just my generation but for many extending back to our country of origin, Ireland, where my great grandpa was a worker in a coal mine and before that were tenant farmers on English land. I always heard “Just because you are poor doesn’t mean you can’t be clean” like a mantra growing up. I know it is cliché (lace curtain Irish) but we ALWAYS had beautiful curtains and it was practically a moral obligation to keep up appearances. Oddly enough one of the worst insults that could be heaped on someone’s head was that they had gone “Above their raising”, meaning that someone was putting on airs or acting as if they belonged to a higher social class than they did. Education and physicians were viewed with GREAT suspicion. Education because it would get you nowhere since a good woman just needs to be able to raise good god fearing children anyway and education pulls you away from god. Physicians were suspect because not only were they expensive but also they didn’t know what the heck they were doing and made too much money to be trusted.

Money was fleeting and to be spent while you had it and it was irresponsible and absolutely selfish to save since there was never enough to cover basic expenses and bills. Needless to say one of my core struggles is with money and my relationship to it. Also money and assets were to be shared with your family, period. No matter what you had it wasn’t yours it was ours, everyone was expected to throw whatever assets into the family pot (literally and figuratively).

The only acceptable way to get more money was to marry well, and even then you were expected to behave yourself appropriately and not get trapped into that higher class better-than-everyone-else behavior and of course marrying well also meant that the new wealth needed to be used to help the other people in the family.

I was shown not to be too flashy, not to dream unrealistically, not to save, not to dress too well, not to have too many books, that women only got ahead by aligning themselves with desirable husbands, family matters above all and the wealthy are NOT to be trusted because they are inherently different from the “salt of the earth” regular people and that god was the ultimate source of everything from food to healing.

I, personally, don't subscribe to these ideas any longer, but it has taken A LOT of work and way too much money in therapy to get to the heart of it and move beyond it. Even so, my base position is still reflective of my class, even after all that work.

Alright I am rambling here, I think. I have a lot of ideas bouncing around about this but I thought I would get started somewhere and voila.

[Nat]

[rlin]

damn... twice i have written really long and heartfelt posts and had to erase them because they were just too revealing...

i need to say something to address this topic... it has impacted my life this year more than ever in my existence...

i should mention that i dont think class has anything to do with money... or income...

class and the distinctions that are very real related to it are extremely painful when you are on the lesser end...

it has an amazing ability to make your entire self worth go right out the fukn window...

i have learned my place i think... and that pisses me off more than anything else... i never would have believed that i could imagine that there was a 'place' that i couldnt rise above...

wtf.... its a process...

[SassyLeo]

Oooooh I have some stuff to share/process, but I am super busy at work.

Be back in a bit.

Great idea Medusa.

[Greyson]

Medusa, congratulations on your promotion. The class thing.... Initially as a child I thought much of what I saw as unfairness was more about race, ethnicity, not class. Honestly, I just did not see many poor white people where I lived. If you were poor, you most likely you were brown or black.

As I grew into my adulthood, I began to realize the big unspoken is class. Here in the USA there is the ethos of "Pull Yourself Up by the Bootstraps." This can be a hard one to live up to because one person's "boot straps" are anothers bare feet.

Something that impacted me greatly in the not so long ago past was when I took a position in the evenings and weekends as a security guard. During the day I have worked as an Planner for many years. This is a white collar profession. I have been in this profession since 89.

One day I was attending a meeting for my day job and at the other end of the table was an African American gentleman and graduate of Wheaton at this meeting. He came up to me during the break and asked me if I was not in fact the security guard that worked in the exclusive High Rise where he resided. I told him "Yes, it is me." He was clearly surprised. I tell you his interaction with me after that was very different. Subtle things. Now when he saw me at the security job, he would make a little small talk with me about my day ecetera. Previous to him realizing that the security job position was not my primary job, he never talked to me.

I am rambling a bit. The point that stayed with me is that here wan another "POC" and yet the perceived class differences did impact the nuances of our shared communication and I am sure our lives.

I just threw this out as an example. It is one incident but not exclusive to this one person or situation. "Class" is not something that has been openly acknowledged much in some cultures, but it is a marker that is defined and used in our institutions, decision making processes and so on.

[Medusa]

Originally Posted by Greyson

Medusa, congratulations on your promotion. The class thing.... Initially as a child I thought much of what I saw as unfairness was more about race, ethnicity, not class. Honestly, I just did not see many poor white people where I lived. If you were poor, you most likely you were brown or black.

As I grew into my adulthood, I began to realize the big unspoken is class. Here in the USA there is the ethos of "Pull Yourself Up by the Bootstraps." This can be a hard one to live up to because one person's "boot straps" are anothers bare feet.

Something that impacted me greatly in the not so long ago past was when I took a position in the evenings and weekends as a security guard. During the day I have worked as an Planner for many years. This is a white collar profession. I have been in this profession since 89.

One day I was attending a meeting for my day job and at the other end of the table was an African American gentleman and graduate of Wheaton at this meeting. He came up to me during the break and asked me if I was not in fact the security guard that worked in the exclusive High Rise where he resided. I told him "Yes, it is me." He was clearly surprised. I tell you his interaction with me after that was very different. Subtle things. Now when he saw me at the security job, he would make a little small talk with me about my day ecetera. Previous to him realizing that the security job position was not my primary job, he never talked to me.

I am rambling a bit. The point that stayed with me is that here wan another "POC" and yet the perceived class differences did impact the nuances of our shared communication and I am sure our lives.

I just threw this out as an example. It is one incident but not exclusive to this one person or situation. "Class" is not something that has been openly acknowledged much in some cultures, but it is a marker that is defined and used in our institutions, decision making processes and so on.

Oooh Greyson! This is a GREAT example.

I actually had a rather similiar experience about 6 years ago.

Jack and I were trying to save up money to move in together and between the $400 - $500 a month cell bills and the $4500 it was going to take for the Penske and move, I took a second job at Office Depot.

During the day from 8am-5pm, I worked in a very corporate environment state job as a Project Manager with a $10million budget. At night from 6pm - 11pm, I sold office chairs, stocked pens and pencils, and worked a cash register. Ive never thought of myself as "too good" for any kind of work and I didnt even think to be embarrassed the night a colleague showed up at Office Depot with one of her children to buy school supplies.

She was clearly embarrassed on my behalf and assured me that she "wouldnt tell anyone" about my 2nd job. I assured her there was nothing to hide and that I had no issues with anyone knowing I was working a second job.
Imagine my surprise when my then boss called me in his office a few days later to discuss with me why I was working a second job and how it "looked bad" to have a high-level manager working a "menial" job.

He also advised me in the same conversation that it was "inappropriate" for me to be so friendly with our janitor. Miss Jay had been at that job on the same floor for 30-something years at that point and was a fucking BAD ASS woman who was raising 4 grandchildren and who also didnt take shit from anyone.

After his tsk-tsk'ing, I advised him that he could either give me a raise or shut his trap and that who I associated with was really none of his damn business. (Did I mentioned I was fired from that job about a month later?)

I applaud anyone who does what they need to do to get where they want to be, whether it be pushing papers or dumping trash bins.
Edited to add: pushing papers and dumping trash bins example was not meant to imply that these are "menial" tasks, rather than a reference to my own experience of working to make ends meet.

[Diva]

Both my parents grew up very poor....children of the depression.

But from the time my Dad got out of the army, he was a banker. Eventually, he was an Executive Vice President for a bank here in Austin when I was in elementary/jr high/high school. We had money, but nobody knew it. And my Mom made all of my clothes.

NOW, I'm very proud of that fact, but when I was in school, I was ashamed of that and was made fun of because my clothes weren't store-bought. "Things" became important to me.

Then I married a man from a family with lots of money, and, for a time, I became one of those snobby rich wives who thought they were better than those people who make their own clothes. When I look back on that time in my life, it makes me nearly sick to my stomach over what I became ~ like my mother-in-law. It disgusts me even as I write this. I'm not proud to admit it.

Well now, I have been without a job for over a year, and, even though I have some money, there are times when I am overdrawn with only rice and a cracker and maybe some applesauce in my cupboards.

But You know what? I am the happiest I have ever been. Pride died a slow death for me, but I sang at the funeral and kissed it goodbye. It's all good.

Granted, I'm 57, and I just really do not GIVE a rat's ass, but that's another thread.....I am rich with friends, a daughter who loves me and a puppy who gives me kisses.

[SuperFemme]

I struggled as working poor for twenty years.

I had left a bad marriage with two girls, and later had my son but the relationship didn't even last until his birth.

The cost of just being able to go to work was astronomical. In SoCal, even earning around 100k a year we were no more than one month ahead in savings, aand believe me I didn't earn that kind of salary until the last few years I worked. I had worked two and three jobs to feed, clothe, and house my family and gone to school at night. It took me almost 4 years to earn my B.A. Degree.

I can do 100 things to top ramen to make it a meal.

So then I became disabled through a car accident, and man. Talk about being poor, but now I had the added layer of being disabled. I felt like people refused to look at me or see me.

So then came the settlement. Can I just tell you that I was happier when we had just what we needed? Money makes people weird. I know that sounds silly to say, but from the perspective of being poor to suddenly not having to worry? Things changed in some pretty fucked up ways.

[Nat]

Class for me was always a mixed bag. We were poor, but my extended family wasn't. My dad was absent and there was no child support, and my mom was a secretary. My clothes, my shoes often had holes. My mom would bring me clothes her coworkers' kids had outgrown, we ate cheaply, blah blah blah. But I was surrounded by books and art and music. My grandparents paid for my cello lessons from the age of 6. They didn't want to help my mother too much because they "didn't want to discourage her from finding a husband."

I was expected to graduate from college. A bachelor's degree was the minimum requirement to be a legitimate member of the family - it seemed. But my family did not contribute by either offering to house me or help pay for my education. I lived off an older boyfriend and student loans before I finally dropped out and became a graveyard-shift security guard at the age of 19.

I enjoyed my job. I read many books I otherwise never would have read and have now almost entirely forgotten (like Anna Karenina). I wandered through large, empty buildings. I attended the firings of volatile employees. I woke up homeless drunk men every morning in the parking garage before my boss got to work. The amount of sexual harrassment I received and the amount of people who talked to me like I was a POS or who ignored me completely was a big shock to me at the time - it was so different than I was treated by teachers, peers and family members in my old life.

It was very interesting seeing how differently people treated me depending on my perceived class.

I married into a wealthy family, I finished my degree (I still took out loans - which I will be paying off forever, but no longer qualified for financially based grants due to my marriage). He always seemed to translate me to his family as though I was a little too alien for them. We bought houses. I got to spend a summer at Oxford. But on a weekend trip to London, two classmates and I went to our first lesbian bar - the Candy Bar. When I walked into that beautiful, loud, shining, packed place, it felt like home. By the next summer, I had left him.

And I began eeking out my little life. I have had better salaries and worse salaries during my adult life. I'm currently on the "worse" side of things, but hopefully not forever. I'm alright though. I'm so thankful to have a job. I'm so thankful to have my degree. I'll be paying it off forever. I have lots of feelings about class and money. I know I have privilege. I also know that I am not polished, and that I feel awkward and unkempt and a bit vulgar among people who are more well-heeled.

I don't fit distinctly into a single class and I never have.

[Boots13]

The U. S. Department of Labor describes the working poor as

“individuals who have spent at least twenty-seven weeks in the labor force, but whose income fell below the official poverty threshold.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty threshold is $14,763 for a family of four.

So we are labeled and assigned a social class by our own government, no matter how fluid social class has become. I'm pushing 50 and cant remember a time (in my lifetime) the economy has been so unstable. All the biggies are affected..Tech, Pharm, Oil, Wall Street, Banking, Real Estate, Insurance...nothing seems stable.

Our economy is so unstable that my ideas of Social Class (re: money, assets, income, futures) are rapidly changing as well. Is the instability changing (or at least lending compassion) to our social structures? I hope so.
I don't know where I'm going with this, other than to reiterate that my perception of economic social class in North America is undergoing a huge shift. White Collar is no longer bastardizing our economy, that Blue Collar feels honest to me, and that the Working Poor with its broader base, is no longer thought of as a lazy population. Poverty and deficit has nested in places its never been in my lifetime (Wall Street, Real Estate, Tech, Oil) . Poverty and financial oblivion is a place that any of us are headed, at any time. And as our country continues to corkscrew itself further into economic distress I can tell you that the economic "markers" and expectations (old stereotypes) of social class seem to be changing.

[SassyLeo]

I'm white. My mother's parents came here from Turkey where they were very poor. My dad's grandparents had come from Ireland, and had lots of money until the depression hit.

When I was small, my mom didn’t work and stayed home with me until I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. She made my clothes until I started grammar school. We took the bus everywhere since she didn’t drive, plus we only had one car. My dad worked sometimes 2 jobs plus he became an expert “dumpster diver” and on the weekends we would have yard sales or sell at the flea market.

Most of the kids at my grammar school were white, with a few Hispanic and Asian kids. It was a range of poor to lower middle class kids. I don’t remember many of the kids having name brand clothes or nice toys, etc.

Our house had bad mold issues and crappy carpet. We had used everything; furniture, clothing, house wares, etc. We shopped at the local co-op, using the same bags and containers over and over…my mom made everything from scratch. We didn’t have a TV for years and then when we did, we rarely watched it.

My dad eventually finished his degree and got a well paying job. Then my mom went back to work. We moved into a more affluent neighborhood and I started Middle School in an upper middle class area. I was now attending classes with kids who had gone to a rich grammar school.

So here is where it got tricky for me. We now have 2 incomes and my dad was making good money…suddenly I am going from wearing 2nd hand and clothes from Kmart type places to Macy’s. I went to Summer Camp. I got a stereo for my birthday. We took a trip to the east coast.

Then my parents split and my mom and I moved to a duplex and attempted to pare down, but we had now grown accustomed to a “nicer” lifestyle. And slowly but surely she ended up in big debt.

My dad went on to be fairly successful, working as an executive for "big oil" (and then saw the fucked up crap going on) He consulted and now he has a successful eBay business. He’s been smart with investments and such, but he and his partner also like to travel and own some nicer things. However they are also very frugal. My dad constantly says “we are on a budget” “we need to be cost conscious” “no trips for us” even though they do take trips and never live hand to mouth…it’s so different than how I lived as a child.

When I left CA, I left a well paying job where I was responsible for $1M annual revenues. I was successful (trips, nice dinners, clothes, etc) but stressed out all the time. I moved to Portland to change and grow. I purposely did not take 2 job offers in my industry because I needed change. So for a few months I didn’t work and I started freaking out about money...so I took a temp job and it quickly turned into an opportunity for regular employment. However, it pays less and has less of a “title” than I was used to having. I used to be a Branch Manager for a huge staffing corporation with an Admin and now I am an Executive Admin. I know I made this choice on purpose, but I still struggle with my own internal crap about what I should be doing and making, etc.

I make enough to live on with a bit leftover that I put in savings, but not enough to take nice trips or buy “nicer” things…and don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful to be employed with a great company in this economy…but I still get stuck on the “I should be doing and making more” I still shop 2nd hand, clip coupons, shop sales, etc.

I feel like my relationship with class/jobs/money has been a roller coaster ...and my thoughts are ALL over the place, clearly.

I don’t feel like I had privilege until I was in Middle School, but others might say because I didn’t like on powdered milk, that I had it all my life. Can privilege be subjective?

[Mrs. Strutt]

There is quite a distinction in attitude toward and approach to money between people who grew up wealthy because their parents busted their asses to make good, and people who have inherited a trust fund four, five, ten generations old.

I want to take that thought somewhere further, but I'm not sure exactly where yet.

[Dylan]

Originally Posted by Medusa

This is interesting to me Dylan, how you and I see the term "working class" differently. I have almost the exact opposite take on it (surprise!). I have always viewed "working class" as a term that kinda equates with "blue collar", as in "the people who actually get their hands dirty".
Albeit, Ive never thought about it in any super depth.

I do know that when I was growing up, I knew the difference between blue collar and white collar even before those terms were introduced to me. My Dad and Step-Dads went to work in jeans and a t-shirt and drove a beat-up Datsuns and old trucks to their jobs. They carried their lunch in a leftover paper sack from the grocery store and mostly came home dirty, sweaty, and grimy.
I remember spending the night with a friend from school one time and her Dad came home from work and was wearing a shirt and tie and drove up in something that I perceived to be a fancy car. He wasnt dirty and they had actual glasses at the dinner table instead of plastic cups from McDonalds.
I also remember my friend having her own room (I shared with a brother and a sister) and how clean everything seemed to be.

I thought of my Dads as "working class" and their Dad as some "other" kind of class. Higher class. Better. Because you know how kids like to compartmentalize and label shit

I do think you have a good point about how saying "working class" instead of "poor" negates the working poor. Its like it creates this invisible barrier where the working poor must not be working hard enough because they are still poor or something. And it probably causes some of that "well they can get a second job at Mcdonalds - They're just lazy!" stuff that people seem to be so fond of.

I think my views on 'working class' stem from the people I have seen use the term. They're mostly middle to upper middle class people using the term to describe either their own upbringings or The Poor. When used in their 'self descriptions', I've seen it used to downplay their own middle class upbringings, and when used to describe others, it's always The Poor.

I have rarely (you're probably the first) seen someone who actually grew up Poor use the term 'working class' to describe themselves. I (in my own experience) equate it to the term 'fat'. Fat people call themselves 'fat'...while Others refer to fat people 'overweight' or 'heavy set' or some other 'polite' term.

Blue collar and white collar are the terms I personally use to describe the difference in jobs you spoke of in your post. Also, I think there's this funny idea that 'blue collar' workers are 'poor/working class'. I've seen this attitude for years, and it always makes me laugh. Office workers always assumed I was a class 'beneath' them when I came out to fix their roof. Yet, when I was in the union, I was making a helluva lot more money than most of those people. In the late 80s/early 90s, I was making 33$ an hour...which is (even today) a far far cry from 'poor'. And it was a helluva lot more money than most of the white collar folks I knew. I had better benefits, a better retirement package, better overtime/double time benefits, etc. But, because I got dirty at work and worked outside, it was assumed, I was 'poor' or 'beneath' office workers. It's just interesting to me. It's interesting to me now, because I see comments (even on this site) that landscaping/outside work is still treated this way, and that's what I do now...not because I'm poor and it's the only job I can get...but because I love love LUV it. Yet, it's assumed I wouldn't be doing this work if we weren't in a bad economy, or this is a low-paying field, or some other classist somesuch.

It's also interesting to me how One's friends tend to also come from One's own class bracket growing up. And, if One's friend(s) falls out of The Specified class bracket, One will somehow (subconsciously even) find a reason to drop that friend. I even saw someone post in one of these online survey threads that the quality they most admire in the friends is money. It's just surprising to me.

I have partnered with people who tend to have more education than I, and who grew up with more money than I. This has caused some problems in the past. One area I've really seen this is in the area of 'food in the house'. For some of my partners, when there's not too much food in the house, it's not that big of a deal. "If there's no food, we'll just go out to eat". But I (me,me,me) go through something I call, Food Panic. Even if I have money in the bank, it freaks me out if there's no food in the house (or if the pile is getting low). I've only noticed this type of Food Panic in people who grew up poor...people who have experienced not eating for days (our of Poordom...not out of 'I don't feel like eating for a few days-itis'). Even my dog goes through food panic, and constantly checks the level of food in his bag (yeah, Mahhh Boo and I have been poor together). I also tend to hoard food. I'll do this in hotel rooms; I did this on a cruise. I have to have food with me. I even keep food in the car in case there's an emergency.

I've also noticed that sometimes when One falls from a certain class bracket, some people will immediately equate that with 'an issue' (drugs/depression/some reason to blame the One who fell from the class bracket they were in). Example: When I lost my job a few years ago (you know, with half the country who lost their jobs too), some people stopped talking to me, because I couldn't afford to go out to eat and do the same things I used to do. I heard all kinds of stories through the rumor mill that the reason I didn't have any money is because, "all he does is sit around and do drugs all day". Now...um...if I can't afford to eat, I certainly don't have money to buy drugs. I mean, I heard allllllll kinds of crazy stories about why I didn't have any money. But I never heard from Others about how we were in such a miserable economy, and how half the country had lost their jobs, and how we were in a recession, or any of that. It was always blamed on my fictitious drug problem. It's just interesting to me how being poor/doing drugs/alcohol seem to go hand in hand in some people's minds. I think the stigmas of Olden Days still carry on no matter how ridiculous they are. Being poor is (almost) always chalked up to something The Poor Person did. "They don't work hard enough"
"They're on drugs"
"They're lazy"
"They're just not looking for a job"
"They just don't want it bad enough"
"They'd rather just mooch off of other people"



I'm Rambling Now,
Dylan