Do you not have a phone? I found that the price of getting a phone & internet access via dial up was basically the same as the cost of cable ($30 & $9.95 vs. $44.95). its a good trade, abandoning the phone, getting broadband & using something like net2phone as long as you don’t mind not accepting incoming calls, or calling people from the computer.
(as you can tell, I’ve got nothing to do tonight but surf the 'dope)
I felt the difference a lot, but in pretty subtle ways. Sometimes I’d get annoyed that people didn’t know things that I consider second nature- like how to ride public transportation. A lot of times it’d be hard to see people doing things- like spending two hundred dollars on clothes- that implies a richness that I simply could not comprehend. I never considered myself poor before I went to college and saw how everyone else lived. And it made me feel really alone. Being poor is pretty much an invisible trait. I had no one else to talk to who could relate to my experiences.
One time I wrote a poem for a writing class about my childhood. After I read it, everyone came up to me and said how much it touched them. But after that they all treated me like “the poor girl” and not like one of them at all- like I was some sort of special, slightly pitiful, but ultimately brave and inspiring project. I was glad I waited until the last day of class to read it.
Meeting my boyfriend was wierd. His parents are lawyers. He went to a private high school that cost more than my college. When I met his parents, I know I did some “wierd” things like mentioning the prices of things when I told stories. I visted my boyfriend’ss private school once (lockers! carpets! skylights!). I burst into tears. Some kid was building a kayak in the woodshop. In my high school we needed to make sets for a drama production. We couldn’t afford wood, but a church had recently been torn down and rebuilt, and they donated their old wood to us. I spent weeks after school prying out nails from that old wood so that we could make our sets. I can’t help but wonder what I could have done if I had access to decent facilities and decent teachers. I’ve gone pretty far in my life, but when I see all the oppertunity that I never had, i can’t help but be sad.
And yet here I am, surrounded by all this abundance- all the food I can eat, all the facilities and talented teachers I could find- and I still complain about my classes just like everyone else. I don’t feel particularly lucky to be here, even though I love it. Why me and not so many of the people I grew up with? I still don’t feel like I really belong. I’m stuck between social classes in a country that swears it is classless. It’s not a tragic state to be in, but it’s not a comfortable one either.
…Calculus…
We do have a phone (thanks to some nifty monopolies, we couldn’t have broadband without getting regular phone service). I think we get some kind of poor people’s discount on it (we have substidized electricity, too- without that we’d never bring ourselves to turn on the heater). We don’t even get call waiting on our plan.
But most of my friends in town just communicate through instant messaging. I’d imagine for a lot of people my age- especially those that have lived in dorms- IM is more popular than phones. It’s also the main (and cheapest) way I keep in touch with my family and out-of-town friends.
Sven, I totally can relate… What’s more, is that my college is notoriously conservative Republican (I wasn’t aware of this until a couple of weeks in). I have nothing against conservative republicans, but some of the standpoints I’ve encountered are a bit extreme. I’ve sat through some interesting classroom debates about those lazy people on welfare who weigh down the system… Or how I have to defend myself sometimes when it suddenly remembered I’m a minority (They forget, which isn’t exactly a bad thing if you consider it) and affirmative action enters the convo… Sometimes I feel like I’m in the movie “Clueless”…I just heard the phrase “Gee, just $65 for that sweatshirt? What a bargain!” Other girls agreed as they passed about one of my college’s obscenely priced gift shop items. Maybe I’m just from a different planet, right?
Heh… Have you told your boyfriend much about your background? How does he feel? Has he ever said something unintentionally that you’ve found elitest? (Sorry if I’m too personal. Feel free to blow me off at anytime.)
While I’m at it, I’ll explain the whole poor person/fast food connection.
Cooking food from fresh veggies and whole grains and stuff is healthy, cheap, and good, but only if you have a few things the poor don’t have- transportation, time, and money.
A lot of the poor don’t have cars, and few have reliable cars. For me to get the grocery store means an hour on the bus. That brings us to the next problem- time.
Food goes bad. If you buy food for every night of the week (which you do because getting to the store is a pain), you have to eat at home every night that week or else the food goes bad and you end up paying double for the meal. A poor person’s schedule (especially a single parent’s) is often erratic enought that at least a couple meals a week will have to be away from home. So keeping fresh food around is a gamble regarding if you will be around to eat it. I’ve seen whole weeks of groceries go bad because of some circumstance or another, and letting food go bad is just throwing money away.
Cooking also has a lot of hidden cost in it. Growing up, we did not have a fully stocked kitchen. If a recipe called for olive oil, a couple of spices and flour, we’d have to buy a bottle of olive oil, a bag of flour and two things of spices. The spices alone would add ten bucks to the meal. Sure, if we had built up a pantry we would have saved money in the end. But we never had the money to spend upfront. We’d go to the store to buy food for a single meal and end up having to spend more than a week’s worth of food at Taco Bell.
Taco Bell wins.
LOL. There’s actually a study done of the demographics of people who eat food at Taco Bell. It is said that most of the people that eat there are Hispanic.
I can tell you from experience that Taco Bell is not real Mexican Food, in spite of its merit.
The reason for this is that many of the people who have to eat there are poor. And statistically, so this study shows, many hispanics are poor. I need to dig around for that study again…
even sven- If you don’t mind me asking, which complex did you live in? I can only assume by your thoughts on Cordova that you went to a totally different Cordova than I did…
There were plenty of rich kids, and comfortable kids at Cordova. I know, several of them were my aquaintances. And I know several that were poor… not quite me, but close.
Do you think growing up poor(ish) is what has contributed to your left-of-center outlook in life?
Also, tell your friend to high him to a free clinic. California has them, and while they may not be the cleanest, nicest places to be, it sure beats getting drug to the ER for walking pnumonia.
Taco Bell is, of course, the cheapest fast food. In my town, all the workers were Russians and Ukrainians. It’s kind of surreal. I can’t even think about eating Taco Bell now without gagging, especially with all the decent taquerias around here. But I ate it several times a week for years.
I’ve talked to my boyfriend a lot about my background. It causes some tension. He works hard and makes money, and he can’t figure out why I go all bug eyed when he drops a few thousand on his fifth computer. He’s not really rich- he’s working his way through college because his parents spent all their money on his high school. It does cause some tension- he feels guilty that he had all this privledge and didn’t even know it. But as long as I don’t tell too many sob stories, it isn’t a big deal.
Tristan
I lived on Coloma, near the old Compton’s market.
I was in Cordova at kind of a wierd time. My generation there started a couple years before I got there and had already passed by my second year of college. In my day, all the solidly middle-class people from the base were already gone, but all the new affluence hadn’t built up. Shopping centers stood abandon. Police helicopters flew by every night Immigration was huge. Something like 67 languages were spoken when I was in high school. I knew a few kids who counted as “rich” because they lived in ageing Sun River homes, and some people from “old” families who lived a firmly middle-class life. But campus was pretty much full of new immigrants, people from White Rock, and the dwellers of various sketchy aparment complexes, youth homes, and rotting, rented suburban houses that filled Rancho.
And we were a poor generation. There was no shame in wearing thrift-store clothes and doing things like passing around notebooks instead of yearbooks for signitures. It was hip to be “ghetto”. If we went on field trips, we’d have to take public transportation because we couldn’t afford school busses. I only knew two people who’s parents weres till together. We’d all make jokes about how the buildings in our schools were falling apart around us. It was a fun time. We had kind of a plucky ghetto pride in our resourcefulness. We’d make wearing off-brand clothes trendy, and make the best rally floats we could out on a fifty dollar budget. It kind of makes me sad to see that that is now pretty much gone.
I think a mix of my mother’s politics, my growing up poor, and an early exposure to a lot of diversity led up to my political views. But mostly my (wonderful) leftist mother.
evensven- check your e-mail… I had another question for you! 
Are you just a poor girl, and nobody loves you?
Are you just a poor girl, from a poor family?
Sorry. 
Just wanted to send you a little empathy from another college senior with a potentially useless BA in the making…I’m a double-major in Communication and Philosophy. And I’m terrified about insurance…I have a serious medical condition that I just had my second major operation for (and may not be able to graduate on time because of it), and my perscription medication would cost me around $200 a month without insurance.
Right now I’m planning to take a 5-week course to get certified to teach English as a foreign language after graduation and then flee the country for a couple of years. I think if I go to Japan I can make some decent money and have insurance.