Thu Jul 2, 2009 at 4:38 PMWhat do you think? Alex said he thought it was pretty aggressive. I can see that.
What Others Have To Say
A Few of my Own.
Here is my list of skills for surviving Public Housing and the schools
Jet inhabitants attended :
1. I know how to ride on the top of the elevator.
2. I know who the voice of God was.
3. I know how to slide down the downspout from a third floor classroom
4. I know how to move between apartments without using the hall.
5. I know what is at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
6. I know how to stop an escalator using a penny.
7. I know how to fool a teacher.
8. I know how to act dumb.
9. I know how to hit an ear with a penny from 10 feet away.
10. I know why tilt wheel GM products disappear.
11. I know to get three different school ID's.
12. I know how to get 3 free school lunches every day.
13. I know which teachers grew up in the projects.
14. I know how to act invisible.
15. I have gone with the neighbor and pretended to be their child
16. I know how to act-up in the welfare office so we get out quick.
17. I know how to learn but don't act like I do
18. I know how t be the original army of one.
Send in your list.
To me, it seemed almost like a poem. Maybe it's how sad and wistful some of them sound.
"I know how to act invisible."
"I know how to learn but don't act like I do."
"I know how to move between apartments without using the hall."
Those ones, especially, really spoke to me. About how some people overcome the fragility of their own existence by being so tough.
I've been thinking a lot, too, about Felicia's comments on Wednesday's post. About using food stamps to get change, and to have your face burn hot with shame because you knew it was wrong, because you knew people were looking down on you.
That's just so much to deal with as a child. So is knowing when to act up in the welfare office.
Reading these lists really helps me connect with an existence I haven't lived and so I don't understand. I can't know what those feelings are like.
But I can imagine them. I can have empathy, and sometimes, that empathy allows me to see the world in a way I couldn't before. Through the eyes of that child in the welfare office, now all grown-up, but who still feels the sting of that middle-class glare.
Do you have a list to share? And did this list, or the other one, cause you to see something in your world differently? Tell me about it.
Happy Fourth of July, blogosphere. Don't kill yourself with fireworks. See you next week.
2 Comments
lizjoyntsandberg said:
This list is heartbreakingly beautiful. The way that knowledge is accumulated based on our life experiences. I grew up as a middle class person in rural Michigan and now find myself in different circumstances straddling the line between poor (crisis pregnancy, WIC, medicaid, jobless with no prospects, former government subsidized housing dweller) and middle class (nice apartment, husband in grad school, car, education, former business owner, dog, art). I sometimes feel like the skills I've accumulated are out of place no matter where I am - at the WIC office I get the royal treatment - the only white woman in my group who is a native english speaker. I have never once had to attend a meeting to get my coupons - which I am supposedly required to do. In the grocery store I get confused looks when I pull my coupon out of my nice bag for milk or eggs which i put in my car and drive the few blocks back to my apartment. I have cried on the phone with my medicaid advocate because I don't know how to get him to help me sort out the mess of my insurance. I have conversations with family and friends who are confused as to why I don't have the money to pay for the medical care I need - who don't understand what it is to be stuck without other options and grateful for the help these programs provide - who want and expect me to feel some level of shame for needing this help. I'm saying this not because I feel sorry for myself (even though, I'm ashamed to say, I sometimes do), but because never before have I realized how true this disparity of specialized skills is - and many times I have wished that my life as a middle class person had equipped me with the skills I would need to navigate these new systems, or at least delivered on the promise that I would never need them and would always be able to do what I need to without help.
surpriseimnate said:
Ok, not to make light of a serious topic, but I kept picturing an guy in a ninja suit while reading this list. A lot of it just seemed to be focused on feats of dexterity. Sorry.
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