What is it like being poor? Where to begin....

Probably the best place is the background noise, the underlying stress you feel deep in your gut.

The nagging sense that you're one disaster from losing what little you have.

When you're a poor kid growing up, you don't do "normal" stuff other kids do.

Vacations, oh forget about that. You don't even do *basic* stuff.

You don't invite friends over (unless they are poor, too) because there are holes in the carpets, bathroom ceiling is falling down.

When you do go over to your friends house, maybe you're there on pay day.

You've heard Dad come home drunk. The yelling downstairs. The slaps.

It's all part of the background noise of poverty.

I grew up Christian, so my family had their own stresses, but they didn't drink. Rare among the poor.

Kids who grow up in poor.... You just learn to accept that some of your friends get slapped around on payday by an alcoholic father, assuming he's even home at all.

When you're poor, your life is a series of shames small and large.

You get dropped off a block away because the car (if it starts) is rusty and has a loud backfire.

If you're a girl, stuff like a prom dress is way out of reach.

Poverty increases stress, and rewires the brain and how the amygdala works.

People snap, and it's usually the kids who suffer the most.

They get screamed at for no reason, they have no way to process what is happening.

And their parents turn to drugs, amplifying the anger.

- One friend of mine watched his dad get shot in the head. Who knows for what reason.

- Perverted friends of parents (or in case of single moms, the boyfriends) molest daughters.

Stuff you'd consider only happening in movies happens to the poor.

The bad stuff, anyway.

When you grew up real poor, not "fake poor" (every politician is Horatio Alger!), you know the black kids and Mexican kids had it maybe a little worse than the "poor white trash," but we're talking a matter of small degrees.

To fight over WOKE issues, that's economic privilege.

Factory shuts down? That's it. It's over for your family.

It's onto welfare until hopefully a new one opens.

For us, a family of 6, my dad made $8.50 an hour. Even adjusted for inflation, that's around $15 an hour today.

And that was a GOOD factory job.

I see all of these spokespeople for the oppressed, and the issues they talk about simply aren't real.

The poor Mexican kid and white kid and black kid want the same thing - JOBS for their parents.

"Intersectionality," or whatever it's called wouldn't even be comprehensible.

Let's be real.

How many self-proclaimed spokespeople for the oppressed ever had to considering joining the military because that was the ONLY way to go for college?

Garden variety poor shit, people don't even understand *that*.

Have you ever visited a friend or loved one in prison?

GARDEN VARIETY poor people shit.

Not even on your radar.

Just shit that's part of life, you don't even know others live differently.

The law falls down HARD on the poor.

You get followed around closely, pulled over, stopped.

The "rich kids" (fake rich but in small town it's all relative) committed way more drug crimes. They always got away with it, though, because their dad knew someone who knew someone.

The biggest drug dealer in my small town was a rich kid. Dad was a judge. *Finally* police had to stop him after he was importing way too much and became talk of the town.

His punishment?

Never arrested.

He agreed to join the navy.

Poor kids get arrested for dime bags.

How many people who went to your high school are in prison? Committed suicide? Murdered?

I went to a small ass high school and can't even keep track.

My own brother did 10 years in state prison for shooting his meth dealer who came to collect a drug debt.

I mean growing up poor and shit is just wild.

In the circles I'm in as a 42 year old people would go, "Wait slow down your brother was in state prison for shooting his drug dealer?"

That's just NORMAL shit if you grew up poor. It's more like, "When does so-and-so get out?"

You will never hear "real poor" (lots of fake poor people out there) say oh it's great, growing up poor is awesome, builds character.

FUCK NO.

Assuming you make it out of poverty (harder to do than you think), all you care about is NEVER going back to that.