Posted on 07/28/2011 8:14:47 AM PDT by MNDude
I recently posted a sob story about the starving children out in Boston. I commented about how my family was quite poor during some years, and had a lot of Cream of Wheat with vitamins for breakfast and peanut sandwiches with an apple for lunch.
Nonetheless, I never really considered myself poor or of different class than those eating hot lunches though. It was more of a feeling like "Dang! No money for that at this time I guess".
I was wondering how many of you growing up experienced "poverty" and how you and your family dealt with it.
Peanut sandwiches?
Poor yes but I never thought of it as poverty.
The only reason children would be going hungry is because their parents/whatever think that somebody else should prepare their food for them.
In college, as an undergraduate, I was definitlely poor and often homeless. Those were tuff times for me. I refused to get student loans.
Yeah, one day I got up, and discovered I had nothing.
But my family and I dug ourselves out of that hole.
Took years, but it was worth it.
I learned that lesson when I was in my mid-teens.
Poor is a state of mind.
Consider the street people who want it that way...not a care in the world and the open road before them.
My dad worked 2 jobs, and my mom worked as well. His 2nd job (horse shoeing) allowed him to bring us along, so we had some good quality time while he worked. We sometimes even “helped” (hold this, get me my...). It also set a big example for us - you don’t whine, you don’t beg, you knuckle down and do what needs to be done to keep a roof over your heads and the children fed. We sometimes had help, but only from other relatives, never the government.
We sure learned to accept what we had and not spend a lot of time dwelling on what we wanted.
Spaghetti with tomato sauce no meat. Lots of hot dogs. One Christmas I got a pencil case with some pencils and a hula hoop, which was OK because I really really wanted a hula hoop. I never felt deprived, it was just our life. My only new clothes came at Easter I got a new dress and hat, usually matched my older sister which I was not crazy about.
Not a lot of toys, I remember lots of made up games with the neighborgood kids.
First real job in 1982 $3.35 an hour. I survived without hand outs, food stamps, section 8 housing.
All we had to eat were cotton wool balls dipped in milk (ref spinaltap)
Took a whole lot of tryin
just to get up that hill.....
Garage sale clothes and hand-me-downs. Socks with holes in them and exactly 4 outfits to go to school in and 1 pair of shoes per year right before school, otherwise flip flops.
My grown kids are going to find out what growing your own food and going without is all about.
haha...peanutbutter jelly. weren’t that poor. :)
$10 birthday gifts???? You were living high on the hog! I still have the broach my mother gave me for I think my 10th birthday.....it must have cost her about $2....it was all she could afford....but it’s the ONLY birthday present I remember.
I guess it depends on your perception or definition of ‘poor’.
We ate 3 meals a day, but didn’t have meat every nite. Some nights we’d have pancakes or eggs, or even fried onion & ketchup sandwiches. And we ate a lot of macaroni dishes.
Dad never had a new car (I don’t think he had a car less than 10yrs old and he was always working on them).
We wore hand-me-down clothes, were told quite frequently that we couldn’t afford things like ice cream or new shoes.
Never thought of myself as poor. Just didn’t have as much as others may have .
You had cotton balls?
We had to dip our fingers in the milk and suck it off.
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