American Poor
You know that moment when you realize that you have exactly $100 left in your bank account, you have no health care, you have no savings, you're a month behind all your bills, you're thousands of dollars in debt to your credit cards, and your weariness is a thousand layers thick?THAT MOMENT SUCKS LIKE HELL.
What can you say to someone who has arrived at this moment? I don't know. I really don't know. The best advice I can give to you, (who may encounter such a person), is that there are some things better left unsaid. Such as:
- At least you don't have terminal cancer and six kids and no partner or teeth.
- Well thank goodness you've stored up all that fat because you could live off of that for quite some time.
- At least you have each other.
- But aren't you glad you're not pregnant. (duh)
- Isn't it wonderful how adversity can show us our strengths and make us shine like sweet little monkeys?
- I would like to introduce you to my friend...Jesus Christ...
- At least you aren't dead. (not a smart comment to make to a previously suicidal person)
- Aren't you grateful that a mountain lion has never ripped your face off your head?
- What are you complaining about?
- You're not poor until you're "Angela's Ashes" poor.
- Can't you just sell some more stuff? (SMACK GOES YOUR HEAD!)
- Maybe you wouldn't be so poor if you had faith in our creator just a teensy bit more. (yeah, because religious people are NEVER poor)
- Your life is like a beautiful film in which a family has to almost die before they get rescued by a rich uncle.
- Don't complain until you have only five dollars left.
- Wanna go shopping for shoes?
- Money can't make you happy anyway.
- I will eat all your frogs and then you'll see what it's really like to be bummed out!
Aha, I have hit upon a pleasantry that just might not piss me someone off who finds themselves at this moment in their lives that many of us have been in at some point in time or will be in eventually:
Random helpful commiserating commenter:
It's a little like having the hounds of hell nipping at your heels one thousand four hundred and forty minutes of every day, isn't it?
Person in bad situation:
Why, yes it is. It's exactly like that.
Random helpful commiserating commenter:
In fact, it's a lot like dying of exsanguination all alone in a field of itchy tall grasses full of ticks, wouldn't you say?
Person in bad situation:
You hit it right on the head with that one. But don't you think it's also a little like when you stub your toe and then it turns green and falls off and you realize that you can't become a foot model?
Labels: chaotic life, poverty