Dollar Days at the Goodwill

I don't deny, as per my earlier comments, that the poor have appalling taste, regularly eat appalling food, and can be heard unrestrainedly and unrepentantly screaming at children in markets and alleyways from Bangor to Bangalore. They wear track suits and wife-beaters, raise and lower their vehicles in accord with the year's and their region's working-class trend, are known by diminutive versions of their names in adulthood, and track 'celebrity news' with the passion and vigor other groups reserve for changes in stock values or political causes. But as unconcerned as they may seem with the weighty matters of the day (with the exception of the latest celebrity diet), if an Armageddon of whatever sort comes tomorrow, I want to face it alongside the half-time hustlers, the tenement-dwelling single mothers and guys whose pants, if inflated, could confer safe trans-Pacific passage to an unpapered family of seven.

Why? Because what we have that the rich don't is Reality. Sometimes, when one is without money or pleasant options, there is, admittedly, an embarras de richesse, a too-lush assortment of Personal Growth Opportunities, in this arena for anyone's taste. It can be downright confusing at times, the Opportunity, yet again, to decide which bill(s) are most pleasingly left unpaid and which, in their pink or blue insistence visible beneath their undisturbed little white jackets (we don't open them until we have the money in our hand and need to figure out how many or few money orders we can get) are a better bargain to pay NOW, and thus avoid the recurring Fifty-Dollar Reconnection Fee. Or worse yet, the next step: the Fifty-Dollar Reconnection Fee coupled with the You're-Clearly-a-Bad-Risk-and-We-Don't-See-It-Getting-Any-Better four hundred-dollar deposit.

(As a sidenote, however, the Bad-Risk Deposit has its benefits that no rich person would consider. To the poor, however, once they manage to take it from the food and telephone budget and send it in, that deposit serves as a functioning savings account which, the next time the electricity bill is the one needing ignoring since the food and telephone now have to be paid, they can use against itself. At least until they have to pay it back up.)

Clearly, all this Reality results in outpourings of creativity. Not merely the shell game of 'Which bill shall we pay this month? - Ah, looks like the penny's under the T-Mobile this time, honey!' It's much broader, although the common denominator is, of course, money and its lack. Rich people have no idea how many times over how many months you can reinflate a punctured tire daily and still get to work and school. The wealthy would have no idea how to make a ten-dollar thrift-store child's bed into a brilliant settee. They don't know all the short cuts, long cuts, and beautiful side roads that I do, from having cars that wouldn't go over 45 MPH. Or that foam and fabric and a glue gun are all you need for a beautiful headboard.

Some definition is in order, though. I'm not talking about either the idle rich or the idle poor. The wealthy who do Put Their Pants on One Leg at a Time, Same's Us, yar, and the poor who go to their two or three jobs and try against exhaustion not to have everything completely suck when they are at home. Who don't want to use the food bank, and know which dollar store is better for plates and spatulas and which for socks and frozen food. The ones who make do with the smallish hole in the car roof and just adapt and at some point stop noticing it. Who have earned a deep and invaluable sense of perspective and an instinctive knack for prioritizing, in every area. The classic hymn declares that it's a gift to be simple. I think likewise it is a blessing to have been poor.