There was a year in my life when I had money to almost-burn. My rent was less than a quarter of my take-home pay. I had thousands of dollars in the bank (to pay taxes with, and also to you know, save); I took spontaneous trips, bought multiple plane tickets for multiple people, and drank wine that cost more than $20 a bottle on the regular. It was a fine year.
But bear with me, for this is a story about being miserably poor and finding compassion.
I’ve never been poor per se, as in I’ve never systemically suffered from poverty. But I have been broker than a joker. When I was living in Seattle at the Space Capsule, I was making $9 an hour, at 37.5 hours per week. That was the poorest time in my life. Rent took almost half my paycheck, utilities and attempting to repay debts took more, and I regularly nabbed soup or pickles or whatever from my roommate (thanks and apologies, Elly) after he opened his red pepper bisques. Having never been so poor, I was too ashamed to ask if he minded sharing his groceries - he never inquired, but I’m sure he noticed how fast the soup went. He started buying extras during his weekly shops.
I almost never knew what I was going to be eating for dinner - it was probably going to be pasta with sauce, and it was definitely not going to have much green in it. I subsisted mostly on bruised apples or strawberries, and candy from the chocolatier I worked at. I got a nasty UTI that turned into a kidney infection - I had no insurance and no money for OTC drugs anyway. I bought garlic cloves and ginger root from the Asian grocery across the street, made and drank medicinal tea for about five days. I missed four days of work. I tried to go back on days five and six, but I was too weak to do anything but work the register, and I had no money for food, so I was back to eating candy. The last thing you should do when you are recovering from a kidney infection is eat candy. My body has never fully recovered - I get UTIs at the drop of a hat, and I'm waiting for my kidneys to give up the ghost.
Could I have called my parents for money for antibiotics? Sure, but I was already calling them once a month to tide me over until payday. I was ashamed of myself, having come out west so young, and then failing so miserably in my adolescent independence. I had already lost all financial aid by almost failing out of college my first two semesters (that’s another story!), so I just… didn’t want to disappoint them further. I wanted to fight for myself. I wanted to be an American bootstrapper, rise up out of poverty like some miracle financial phoenix.
It’s only looking back as an adult, after interacting with friends of friends who still buy into boots that I realize I had no bootstraps. Bootstraps are a myth. It is true that you can rise out of poverty with hard work and perseverance, but the equation to do so has a dozen factors: your race, parent’s class, education level, among many other things. A lot of those factors are affected by the other factors - If you grew up in poverty, you are more likely to have been educated in poverty-stricken school district, and therefore less likely to have gone to college. (More on that here: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/the-bootstrap-myth/)
Anyway, moving away from bootstraps and systemic oppression of the poor, I wanted to tell you a story about choice, compassion, and needs.
I had about $3.60 in my bank account, and $2.50 in my pocket. I wouldn’t get paid for a week. Johannes (my rabbit) was out of food. A small bag of his regular food at Petco was $2.99+tax. the cheapest in town. The nearest Petco was in the U-District, about six miles away from my apartment in the International District. Bus fare was $1.25… you see where this is going. I had just enough to get there, buy rabbit food, and come home. I figured I’d subsist off of apples and half-rotten strawberries during the day at work, and cigarettes I bummed from Keevey to stave off the hunger pangs.
Upon arrival, I found there were out of the size of bag I had been planning to buy. The next size up was about $5.00, I think, and I had luck before running my debit card through as credit and begging my credit union to withdraw their overdraft fee (which they always did, because credit unions are the shit). The checkout guy was young, maybe 25, and he messed something up on the register, or couldn’t cancel out of the debit screen once he’d hit it. I was stuck, and my account was effectively frozen.I tried to explain, he asked if I had any cash… I told him, “Only my bus fare to get home. I live in the ID.” He wouldn’t have been able to make such a steep discount on his register anyway. I tried not to cry as I turned away from him and started towards the door. He put his hand on my shoulder to stop me,
“Wait, don’t go anywhere.”
He picked up the 10 pound bag of food I was trying to buy, and went to the back room. I stood, fretting, wondering if he was going to call the manager, if they were going to yell at me or ask me if I had been stealing. He emerged, an aeon later, with an clear garbage bag full of rabbit food.
“This one broke in the back, so we can’t use it. We’re going to throw it out, but I think you should take it. It didn’t touch the floor or anything.” He handed me the unwieldy bag, more rabbit food than I had ever bought at one time, more food than I had ever bought for myself at a time (college and post-college = eating piecemeal, literally.) “Just don’t tell anyone.”
I’d been keeping rabbits as pets for ten years at that point. You can’t just “break” a feed bag. They’re pretty sturdy and it takes scissors to open them on the regular.
This young man stole for me, from his own place of work, and risked potentially everything he had for no discernable reason - maybe for pity, or because he thought I was pretty and sad, but the reason behind it doesn’t matter because Johannes ate that night and many nights after.
And I started keeping all the bruised apples we couldn’t use in a box for the homeless guy who walked by our shop every other night.
Always pay it forward. The more people you pay it forward to, the more people they will, and the faster the world becomes a kinder place.
Happy New Year, friends. I love you all.
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