THINGS MY FRIENDS TAKE FOR GRANTED AND DON'T APPRECIATE

This entry is a follow-up to the blog entry that follows this one.  The blog entry below discusses what was considered "normal" when you grow up dirt poor and this blog entry discusses the "normal" things others take for granted but those of us who grew up dirt poor honestly appreciate.  Both entries are similar stories so my readers may see some repetition.  But it all ties in........

I appreciate it SO MUCH that my children never had to live this way.  Sometimes our money was tight, but they never  had to come home to disconnected lights or bill collectors banging on the door, like I did.

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I recently came across this article on facebook, ….. 

“25 former poor kids share things they never had that their friends didn't appreciate. It's a lesson in gratitude”

https://scoop.upworthy.com/former-poor-kids-share-things-they-never-had-friends-didnt-appreciate-its-a-lesson-in-gratitude?fbclid=IwAR1QQ0UHCdk9KH1OcGybb4wEOzacASOWIgsysPrEbwOMvE5dhUvzHekxw3A 
 ….. which made me think of my own list.  Right now I really miss CJ, as I know she could add so much more to this very long list.
 

Here is the list of things I've come to appreciate..... 

My friends have frequently heard me describe myself as “I grew up dirt poor.  Seriously, dirt had it better than us.  We had perfect attendance at school because school is where the food was.  And this was LONG before free lunches and breakfast at school was not even an idea yet.”
 
Before you read further, I also tell people I wouldn’t change a thing because it has made me the strong, independent person I am.  People who grow up “with everything” (uh….that can probably be translated to “grow up normal”) can’t figure out how to survive what I refer to as “just life”.
 
So many of the things listed in this article hit home for me.  Being yelled at for eating because we wouldn’t have anything for supper tomorrow.  Never being allowed to drink milk because we had to save it for the baby. Having a car that would start.  Having a car that I don’t live in fear will break down on me and leave me stranded somewhere, then getting yelled at for “bothering” people to use their phone to call for help.
 
I appreciate being able to have candles for decoration and not for required light when (not if) the power was cut off because the bill didn’t get paid. I am grateful that I know I will always have heat in the winter.  Growing up it was a given that we’d go without heat for most of the winter.
 

I appreciate and am grateful for toilet paper.  Oh my gosh, my kids will never understand the love and thrill of always having toilet paper in the house. My kids will never understand what it was like to go to the bathroom and have NOTHING to wipe with.  Just do your business, pull up your pants, and go.  I can’t remember exactly when, but I was an older kid (8? 10?) before I learned that girls also wipe after they pee.  During the summer, when we were locked out of the house, we would use the outhouse which was never stocked with toilet paper.  We thought it was normal.
 
I remember when I was first married and had real boxes of tissue sitting around.  I thought I had “made it” because I could afford tissue like rich people.
 
Taking a bubble bath today is such a luxury. On bath night (yes, bath night. Once a week bath night), our “bubble bath” was made by throwing a handful of Tide powder laundry soap in the tub to make “suds”.  Never “bubbles”.  Suds.
 
Yes, I’ve gone thru periods where I had to juggle what was getting paid, but my kids never had their power, heat or water disconnected.  My kids will also never know the embarrassment and fear of being ten years old and being told to answer the door and tell the power company “the check’s in mail” while my mom hid in the bathroom.  They will never experience learning to hide when bill collectors came to the door, which was so often it became normal.  I am grateful that I do not have be afraid of who might be knocking at my door.
 
I probably don’t like breakfast food because many of our suppers (rich people had “dinner” …… we had supper) were eggs that dad would get from gramma’s henhouse. Some dishes that were created when I was a kid became a family favorite, but gravy bread will never be one of them.  It was a sign that we were down to less than nothing when gravy bread was supper.  Gravy made from Crisco, flour and water spooned over slices of bread that went immediately soggy. 

 

It may be why I refuse to eat soggy foods, like cereal at the end of the bowl (I will eat two small bowls of cereal instead of one normal bowl, so I can eat the cereal before it gets soggy), and I won’t just crumble crackers in soup for the same reason.
 
Plus I just never got used to eating breakfast since we never had money for milk for cereal and our mom was not the type to get up and cook eggs for everyone.  I went most of my life with no breakfast.  I’m used to it.  It’s no big deal not to eat anything until the afternoon.  I am grateful and appreciate just having my coffee in the morning.
 

And speaking of bread, to this day, I refuse to eat the last two slices in a loaf.  I will never be so poor again that I can’t afford to throw out bread that is stale.  (I also believe to waste food is a sin, so I put these slices in the freezer and use them for stuffing and bread crumbs.)

It would have been nice to have enough underwear.  Our mom would buy 2-3 packs of underwear (figure 4 pair per pack) at the beginning of school year and that had to last three or four girls the entire year.  The. Entire. Year. 

If we changed clothes/underwear too often, we got yelled at for creating laundry for her to do, so wearing underwear for 5, 7 or more days in a row was normal.  I didn’t know everyone else didn’t do that.  

Living in the country, running water caused the electric well to run which ran up the light bill, so too much laundry, taking a bath or washing our hair more than once a week, would get us in trouble for causing the utility bill to run high.  When that happened (not if, but when), then we lived with no power for a while when it got disconnected.

 

Having a clean bed with sheets. Sheets became a luxury and a top sheet was something rich people used.  I honestly didn’t know fitted sheets and flat sheets were a set until I was in my late teens or early 20s.  I thought they were just different styles of sheets that went on the mattress and only rich people put two sheets on the bed. 

 

When I watch HGTV’s house buying shows and I see people who complain because their kids won’t share a bathroom, I have to burst out laughing.  We grew up sharing a bed.  Sometimes three kids to a bed, and if the heat was turned off, all six of us slept in one bed to stay warm. 

 

We had bed wetters in our house and when that happened, the blankets were just thrown back to allow the bed to dry.  Sheets were never changed, mattresses were never protected. We slept on pee-smelling mattresses and sheets.  It was a given.  It was normal.  How much do I appreciate clean sheets and beds?  You cannot imagine.

 

I read a book once, “Hillbilly Effigy”, which was about how a man grew up hillbilly style.  I’m sure the people in New York read the transcript and thought “Wow! This in incredible!” I read it and thought, “Yeah, so?  You grew up like me. Why is that a book?” 

 

But there was one “ah-HA!” moment at the end when he describes having a Christmas list of gift ideas for his nieces and nephews.  On the list is pajamas.  His thought was “Pajamas!  Poor people don’t wear pajamas!” and went on to describe that poor people slept in dad’s old t-shirts or underwear or similar old clothes that were too worn out to pass down to the next kid.

 

I can relate.  I remember having nightgowns when other relatives gave them to us as Christmas gifts, but from the age of about 12, I have never in my life owned pajamas. The idea of having special clothes just to sleep in is just foreign to me.  I really cannot wrap my head around why this idea makes any sense to anyone. You really change out of pants and a shirt to put on a set of different pants and a shirt then go to bed? Really? I own a robe to wear over my underwear or my oversize t-shirt until I get dressed for the day.

 

When we were first married, my husband, Phil, was surprised that I didn’t change clothes when I came home from work.  Change clothes?  Wow, only rich people had two sets of clothes!  When he explained his after-school-clothes were his old play clothes, again I respond that only rich people had clothes for school and clothes to play in. 

 

If we couldn’t wear it to school (in the days when little girls had to wear dresses), then it didn’t get purchased.  Clothes I outgrew became school clothes for the younger sisters.  Plus, as I already mentioned, if we had DARED to wear two sets of clothes that created more laundry that created more water use that created a big light bill, we’d be in big trouble.  I appreciate just owning my one pair of jeans (at a time) to wear on the weekend.

 

I knew someone who was trying to convince me how bad he had it. How there were times when they walked home from school for lunch, ‘…..all we had was some potato soup.”  My response?  “You had lunch everyday?  I thought only rich people did that.”  There was a short time period that we lived in a city school system and walked home for lunch.  No school-provided lunches in those days.  Lots of times, we walked home, watched some tv and walked back.  Lunch every single day was for rich people. 

 

Another person I worked with who complained “we can only afford macaroni and cheese, and hot dogs for dinner.”  I could only internally shake my head and I remembered back when just ONE of those as our whole dinner was considered a feast.  Notice I didn’t say “would have been” …. I was “WAS”.  Supper was a hot dog or two.  Supper was a plate of mac-n-cheese.  

This person didn’t appreciate how good she had it.  

I do.

YOU MEAN THIS ISN'T NORMAL???

You Mean This Isn’t Normal?

Came across this article “15 People Who Grew Up Poor Share the Things That They Always Thought Were Normal” 

(https://tiphero.com/people-who-grew-up-poor?fbclid=IwAR3gCsFvZlCe5rjPa51gkBne4FShY5Ye1tngVhNpeEpVH3XxDmUAqfw6CnU ) 

Wow, did it hit home.  I could have written this article.  It even included a couple  of things I hadn’t thought about but “Yep ….. that, too” struck me as I read it. 

Take a moment and read the original article before going further.........

If  you read this and found it an horrific way to grow up, then I am sincerely glad for you because it means you didn’t have to survive (you read that right …. “survive”) in an environment like this.  I also want to state that I wouldn’t change anything about how I grew up.  It made me into the person I am, with the drive and motivation needed to achieve what I have achieved in life.  Anything I have  had to deal with in my life has never been as bad as what I already survived.

I’m going to take them one at a time…..

Second Hand Clothes

Most kids looked forward to buying new school clothes.  And, yes, we did get a few new things in August before school started. I remember being excited because we got a couple of packages of new underwear, containing 4 (5?) pairs of underpants, to be shared among us three girls ….. for the whole school year.  8-10 underpants for 3 girls for the year.

But the bulk of our clothes came from relatives, friends and passing our own clothes from oldest to youngest. Don’t misunderstand ….. there is nothing wrong with that.  For the most part, they were perfectly good.  But for this reason, I never learned about changing into “play” clothes when getting home from school.  Only rich kids had school clothes and play clothes.  If we couldn’t wear it to school, then it wasn’t purchased for us. 

My friends always told me their play clothes came from “…..my school clothes that were kinda worn out.”  Interesting.  Because MY school clothes that were “kinda” worn out became my little sister’s school clothes.

Groceries Are Exciting

Going thru the groceries bags like it was Christmas morning.  People who got to go to the grocery every week to restock the pantry will never understand the thrill of those days when our parents could afford to go to the grocery “like normal people”.  I remember waiting in the car while our mom shopped for groceries.  When the bags were placed in the back of the station wagon, we’d start diving in and exploring, with exclamations of joy over brand name cereal AND milk (we could rarely afford milk for the older kids …. It was always reserved for “the baby”), bologna, the rare box of cookies.  Not kidding ….. bags of groceries were like lots of gift bags at Christmas.

Being Hungry

We were always told not to ask for something to eat when we visited relatives.  If they offered, that was ok. And that’s normal.  It was considered poite behavior.  But there was a certain way they had to offer.  “Here, have a cookie” was ok to accept, but “Do you want a cookie?” required a “no” response.

I remember being at my Uncle Kenny’s house when he asked us if we had eaten dinner yet (we always had to say “no”.  We were not allowed to tell people we had no food at home).  When I started to turn my head, he stopped me and said, “Don’t look at your mother…… you know if you’ve eaten yet or not.  So just tell me.”  Even while I was shaking my head “no”, I was scared of getting in trouble for “admitting” we had not eaten that day.

Along with that was Only Eating At School.  How often have I told the story about “We had perfect attendance at school because that’s where the food was.”  This was also LONG before schools started offering breakfast (something that didn’t come along until after I had graduated).  We could never assume there would be supper every night, because many times, there wasn’t.

A Staycation

To this day, I have trouble grasping the concept of “everybody” going on a spring break vacation or even a big summer vacation.  Some of the “big” vacations we had included driving to the nearest big city airport to watch the planes take off.  A few times we drove to Dayton OH (about a 45 minute drive) to the free air force museum. That was considered a big time vacation!!!  Mostly, we found access to a river and packed a picnic and swam in the river. I don’t feel that I was deprived of anything.  We enjoyed those events and had lots of family fun.  As the headline says, we thought it was normal.  Only rich people actually “went” on a vacation.

Always Alone

For reasons that differ from those  in the article, our mother’s way of escaping the “poor-dom” was to leave.  Leave her kids at home alone while she (and dad) went to visit relatives.  I was ten years old and in charge of 4 siblings, which included sisters ages 9, 8, 6,  a barely toddling 2-yr baby brother and eventually a baby (infant) sister added to the mix.  They would be gone for hours and would leave nothing for us to have for lunch, along with strict orders to “stay out of the bread! (and) be sure to feed the baby.”

There was one day I vividly remember we thought we could sneak some slices of bread for five kids and our parents wouldn’t notice.  No butter, no peanut butter, just plain slices of bread.  That was our food for the day while our parents were gone for hours.  Yes, I said hours.  When they came home, our mother started yelling “Well, they’ve been in the bread so we have nothing for supper!”   We were in trouble for eating.  Sneaking food was normal.

I was surprised to learn my friends needed sitters when they were my age.  I thought parents leaving all day long and leaving the oldest kid to watch all the other kids was normal.

No Heat in the Winter

Another given.  Six kids in a bed to stay warm.  A 2-story house shut down to 2 rooms with blankets hung at the doorways to keep the heat (from the open oven) in the kitchen and the connecting room where the one bed was.  Frozen water pipes were always going to happen because of no heat in the house.  (You mean everyone didn’t have to deal with frozen water pipes?  Every winter? Really?). If we ran out of heating oil, there was always a week or more waiting time to get more, until the next payday, and that was only if the light bill or rent wasn’t due.

But even that wasn’t a given.  No heat, frozen pipes and the electricity being turned off.  That was our normal winter.  Normal.  As I write this, I have concern that my readers don’t really understand how I’m using the word  “normal”.  It’s normal for my reader to come home to a warm house with dinner on the table and a dad complaining about too many lights on in the house.  It was normal for us to come home to a cold, dark house, hoping the lunch we had at school would  last us until lunch at school tomorrow. 

Normal.

Only One Pair of Shoes

Until I saw this in the article, I never thought about it much.  More than one pair of shoes?  Seriously?  We had “school shoes” in the winter and cheap tennis shoes in the summer, which were usually the gym shoes we brought home at the end of the school year.  Like our clothes, shoes were passed down to the next kid until they were worn out and trashed.

Knowing About the Bills

I can tell you the amount of rent we paid at every house we lived in starting when I was in second grade.  I knew when they were being sued for non-payment of a hospital bill or other bill.  I knew my dad’s paycheck had garnishments on it “with others waiting in line” for their turn. 

I had a 4^th grade concert where we were asked to wear navy blue shirts for girls and navy pants for boys with a white shirt so we’d look “uniform”.  I never even told my parents about it because (1) I didn’t own either of those things and (2) I knew we didn’t have the money to go buy one.  When another mother blew the whistle about the uniform request, I lied to my mom about how I “just forgot” because I didn’t want to embarrass her in front of another mom by saying “Because I knew we didn’t have the money to buy one.”  As a 4th grader, I knew we never had money before payday so to ask for a special outfit to wear to a concert was just not going to happen.  It had become so normal that I didn't even feel bad about looking different from my classmates. 

(I was also VERY surprised at how most of my classmates owned a blue skirt and white blouse.)

We knew running water meant the electric pump in the well would be running which ran up the electric bill.  So baths were just once a week with two  kids at a time in the tub.  When they were done, the next two got in.  Same water.  Because running two tubs of water was expensive.

We didn’t dare create extra laundry (another reason we didn’t change clothes when coming home from school) so we better not get so dirty we had to change clothes during the day.  We lived in the country and played outside so our clothes DID get dirty.  But we just wore them.  All day.  And on the weekend, we wore them the next day, too.  Didn’t everybody?

I remember being shocked while at a family friend’s house and the mom told her son to change clothes because the shirt was dirty.  On the way home, our mom was making fun of the woman for being “uppity” about “a little dirt on his shirt!” and going on about “it must be nice to be able to afford to do extra laundry!”

As we girls grew into teens, we were reprimanded (well, that’s a nice word for it) if we washed our hair too often.  It ran up the electric bill.  Shampoo was expensive so we used liquid dish soap to wash our hair.  (Didn’t everybody?)

All of this because I knew, as a kid, about our bills and what could and couldn't be paid.

Breaking Open the Piggy Bank

Even when we were in elementary school and once in a while got our $1 a week allowance, we knew to save it in case our parents had to borrow it for food or gas. We quickly figured out we wouldn’t be getting our allowance the week the rent was due, but we thought that was normal.  Didn’t everybody forego a week without an allowance because rent had to be paid? 

But then my sister and I quickly saw that loaning them a dollar this week meant  we got two dollars next payday, giving us a dollar to spend and a dollar to hold back to loan them when they needed it.  When.  Not “if”.  When. The entrepreneur spirit hit us early when we saved our two dollars to be turned into three (payback the two, plus our one dollar allowance), and so forth.  We got to be pretty good at parlaying our one dollar allowance into quite an income.  Because it was “normal” for our parents to come to us to borrow money for food and gas money. 

And we didn’t do it so we’d have a lot of money in our piggy bank.  We did it to assure our dad could get to work (because even as kids, we knew if he missed one day’s work, we wouldn’t eat that week), and so we could have food the day before payday.

For those youngsters out there reading this, one dollar went quite a ways back in the 1960s.  Gas was under 20 cents a gallon, so a dollar’s worth of gas could get you four or five gallons or more, which could be at least a quarter of a tank, which would get dad to work for at least a couple of days.  Bread was ten for a dollar, which is why we had lots of gravy bread dinners (something I refuse to eat to this day) or had toast with eggs from our gramma’s chicken coop (which is probably why I am not a fan of breakfast food because I equate it with “poor people food”). 

It's interesting ... when I went searching online for a photo of "gravy bread", there was nothing there.  This photo is the closest thing and it looks WAY more appetizing that what we had.  A slice of bread on a plate, covered in water-gravy (that means it was made with flour and water because we couldn't afford milk).  Dinner became a soggy piece of bread covered with this gravy-like mixture.  So evidently this is such "poor people food" that there are no photos of it online anywhere, with the bragging caption of "Look what we had for dinner tonight!".

When we started babysitting and got our first jobs (my first paycheck-job was at 14 years old), we started buying things for supper …. soup, bread-and-bologna, bags of potatoes ….. out of our paycheck.  It was never said but just understood if we had a job, then we chipped in for groceries.  This differed from the borrowing of a dollar for gas.  This was never  paid back.  It was expected.  It was normal.  More than that, it became survival.

As teenagers, we always got big tax refund checks. We knew when they arrived, we’d need to “loan” our parents money for heating oil or a car repair or to pay the disconnect notice  on the light bill.  It was normal.  Most of the time, it was repaid, but we didn’t really count on it.  My friend laughed at me when they got a refund check and I asked, “How much did you have to loan your parents?”  That’s when I learned it wasn’t normal.

I learned lots of things I did growing up wasn’t considered normal.  But we thought it was.