Ah! This story is talking for me on so many levels! Woman on the Edge of Time starts out with Connie. She is so poor and of course I sympathize with her. Her story is so similar with so many others. I was recently investigating poverty. I limited our weekly spending (grocery, fuel, extras) to reflect an average impoverished family of four. I recorded my experiences on my blog but my experiment only lasted one week. The list of things I was forced to go without was becoming too long. I finally broke when my son's position on the chess team required $50.
I lived in poverty from 1999 to 2001. I had a memory to reference and yet the depression of trying it for 7 days was to much for me to bear. I announced on my blog that there was no longer a question in my mind that impoverished people can't even afford to feel human. One of my cousins jumped on that comment (probably without having ever read an entire blog entry) saying that he is in homes of impoverished people all the time and that they have flat screen t.v.'s and more cell phones that they can handle. I am so sick of hearing this attack on the working class. Always the same. Always the exact same wording even. He's a cop. I simply asked him if he made a habit of condemning an entire group due to a percentage of negative representatives. His being a cop directly effects his perspecitve. He only ever sees law breakers, rich or poor. What I really wanted to ask him was why he thought they had so many cell phones. It's not like our society has developed a status indicated by the number of cell phones you carry. Nobody on the "A" list gets out of a Limo at the Golden Globes talking on two phones at once. Why would a number of cell phones make anyone believe that a person has money enough when most of us are happy if we can successfully maintain one? I really would like to know this....
The flat-screen t.v. is an easy one. It was while my husband and I had barely a dime to our names that we bought the television we had for 11 years and only recently deposed of for a smaller one. When you have less than nothing you are overly aware of your quality of life compared with others. If you ever get a chunk of money, say, from a bonus or a tax return you have two ways to use it. You can buy extra groceries for the next four weeks and improve your quality of life for one month (pay a few bills in advance with the same effect) or you can by yourself something that will be yours for the rest of your dismal days. A little slice of pie that no one can take away form you. While everything else gets flushed down the drain, pays off debt, gets given to phone companies and utilities; one thing promises to remain nice. That t.v. will always have a better picture and sound than the previous one and you don't owe it a thing. It seems like such a worthwhile investment compared to the alternatives. After all, the rich buy stocks, bonds, jewelry, otherwise indispensable items to keep their money safe and close.
I would venture to guess that the number of cell phones directly relates to the number of agreements broken due to unpaid bills. That or they're dealing drugs and who could blame them? Drugs are worth more than gold these days!
If we found out tomorrow that gold could get you high, millionaire's assets would be frozen do to their instant status as drug dealers. The only difference is paperwork.
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