Personal perceptions of poverty

I grew up poor for the first 6 and a half years of my life. I just didn’t know that.

Many of you who personally know me know that I grew up in New Mexico. Well, I was born in Kansas, and lived there for that early period of life I just mentioned.

Our family was eligible for food stamps. But, my father, being a conservative minister in a relatively small, but not too small, of a town (about 20,000) wasn’t going to damage the personal and family image by actually applying for food stamps. (At the same time, he didn’t stop having kids until five had come along.)

Now, I didn’t even know this until my sister told me, years later.

When we moved to New Mexico, things were a little better, but not a lot. For all I know, until my mom started working out of the house, besides her original one day a week as church secretary, we may still have been eligible.

I got reacquainted with poverty my last two years of high school. My dad decided, at the age of 49, to go back to school to get a PhD. My sister, a year younger, moved with me. My oldest and second-oldest brothers were in college, pretty OK financially with the higher amount of federal grants that were available back then (college costs today are both ridiculous and underfinanced) and scholarships they had. My third brother was working on his own after high school.

Notice I haven’t mentioned my mom. Because she and dad were divorced, she wasn’t there, nor was her income.

The divorce agreement only required child support if my sister or I were with mom, not if both of us were with dad.

And, private divinity schools don’t have federal grant money for PhD students.

So, dad is working part time on weekdays, scrambling to preach at congregations without full-tine pastors, and otherwise figure out how to rub two nickels from this, church denomination loans, and a few grants, all together.

Then, my sister moves back to mom after a year, so dad now owes child support — which he paid intermittently. And my oldest brother drops out of college and moves in.

I don’t know how being in college affects food stamp eligibility, but we had to be eligible somehow. If not, we were still below the official poverty line.

My clothes? The divinity school had a thrift shop. Meanwhile, I’m going to the St. Louis equivalent of Dallas’ Highland Park High School, wearing thrift store clothes AND dealing with a dad who thinks this place has a semi-semi-formal dress code and in any case doesn’t want a family image soiled.

So, I’m wearing clothes other kids laugh at, at times.

No, I hardly ever even thought about putting the old change of clothes in a backpack, and changing in a school restroom or something. The few times I did think about it, I was afraid of getting “busted” at it by dad, then facing his wrath of Khan.

Forwarding wayyyy ahead…

I had been out of work a few months before catching on at Lancaster Today. Bounced my first month’s rent check, in fact.

So, that’s why I felt “under duress” when I got offered the Navasota job, even though I do have a few nickels to rub together. I’ve seen poverty, and it’s everything it’s cracked up not to be.

Combine that with coming to “unbelieve” in any sort of afterlife, and you have the prescription for becoming just a little bit more liberal on socioeconomic issues than my parents, too.