Why Don't You Get A Job?

It's been five months since I lost my job. Lost my job ... As if I misplaced it like a set of car keys. I was downsized to line my bosses pockets with more cash. I wish that was some sort of bitter metaphor, but it a simple statement of fact. Like another 10% of Americans I'm unemployed.

When I was let go my son was a mere month and a half old. Brought into this world to share in our pain. My wife hadn't worked since my daughter was born three years earlier. I was the sole income for a family of four and a dog. We were just scraping buy to begin with. The idealistic dream we had was our kids would be better off raised by my wife without most of the creature comforts many kids enjoy, than with those luxuries by a daycare worker.

Four months living in crisis mode. It has an effect on a person. It has an effect on a marriage. And it's only a matter of time before it has an effect on the kids. Maybe it already is. My daughter's acting out more every day. Does she have some sense of what's going on or is she just three years old? I don't know.
I never thought I'd be poor for any reason other than my own choosing. Everyone has this fantasy of being the train riding hobo, living in the moment, but also being able to give it up. This isn't a fantasy and I don't see an end in sight.

My wife has a job now. Working at minimum wage in the middle of the night. Her wage plus my unemployment is enough to pay out fixed expenses. House payment, utilities and so forth. But anything not fixed like gas for the car, food or clothes, just puts us in farther in debt. But at least we still have the house ... for now.

There's a humiliation to going to a food bank. We're newly poor so we don't have the tattered clothes and worn out shoes of the other people. I often feel like they're looking at us like we're robbing them of the hand outs they need so much more than us. Being newly poor we still have the expensive things. The stitching in my shoes didn't wear out the moment I lost my job. My nice things are nice now, but in a matter of months they'll be as worn out as all the faces I see waiting for a total stranger to give them food unfit for regular people.
The food is terrible and eclectic. Frozen milk well past it's expiration date, stale Hello Kitty cupcakes, deep fried pork skin, the butt end of deli sliced ham, cases of pumpkin seeds in the middle of the summer, this is the food we live off of.

And I'm sick of eating Panera Bread. Bless them for they donate so much food. But we get these artisan breads with asiago cheese and smoked red peppers and bagels with fruit and cinnamon and what the hell do you eat with that? There's not lunch meat for sandwiches, there's not cream cheese or butter for bagels. You eat it plain. Bread and water, with a side of canned corn from a dented can. Pray you don't get botulism.

When you're not poor you see a poor person and part of you thinks they somehow chose to live that way. You tell your self "They're overweight, so if they spend their money on something other than junk food they wouldn't be that way." It's not true. When the healthiest thing you're given is beef jerky, it adds up. You gain weight. Then your clothes don't fit and you're force to get those second had too. Salvation Army or Goodwill if you can afford it, shelters if you can't. Laundry becomes an enormous expense. Clothes get worn a second or third time. Clothes with holes or stains normal folk would discard get worn until they give out because they simply can't be replaced.

Tomorrow is a food pantry. I've only been to this charity's one once before. My wife has gone to the rest. It starts at 10am, so they say, but it's common enough for people to start lining up the night before that security is stationed over night. The crowd is restless and the volunteers are eager to go home to their warm beds and hot bowls of soup, so as soon as the food arrives, dispersal begins. It's rare for the event to still be going on by the time it was posted to start. I can only imagine the desperation of the people who wait overnight for food. How many kids do they have? How much food is consumed on the way home because they haven't eaten in days? Do they even have a home?

I plan to get there at 7am. I won't be first in line, but I won't be last either. I won't get first pick of dented cans, but I'll get a dented can. With my wife working, I'll have to take the kids with me. My 3 year old daughter and my 6 month old son who I am so proud of and want to show off to the world will be on display for the whole world to see ... sleep deprived and begging for food with their failure of a father.

This is my life now.