What is your SHORT example of how you grew up poor?

We were so poor that we relied on my sister's friend (who worked at a grocery) to help us "steal" food (it was the days when items were hand-punched into the register, so she would just ring up every third item).

We were so poor my mom trapped fox and raccoon for their furs to be able to buy school clothing. Each year we would go school shopping and each get one shirt and one pair of pants. My aunt would make another polyester shirt for each of us. That was my school ensemble. Nobody cared in elementary school, but I was a fucking pariah in junior high.

We traveled to vacation in Reno, Nevada on a Greyhound bus.

I have absolutely no qualms today about spending my partner and I's DINK on 6 trips a year.

We were so poor that we peeled the wallpaper off the walls and licked the dried glue because it tasted like beef strogannoff!!!

dangerous neighbors who we avoided

R4 How old are you? 16?

No TV.

In the late 80s.

My mother once asked ask me if I needed a winter coat. I told her no, because I knew she didn’t have the money. She was an RN, but apparently didn’t make enough money.

I went in a college visit that snowy winter, wearing a nylon, flannel lined windbreaker. One of the other students asked I didn’t have a coat. I pretended I didn’t hear the question

R8 - no thrift stores in your country?

One 6 Oz Flintstone jelly glass of milk a day. At dinner. Tea & one piece of cinnamon toast for breakfast. Lemon flavored drink & soft pretzel for lunch. All other money was dumped into the baskets passed around on Sunday at Catholic Church by deranged mother.

No college. Parents laughed at me. There’s no money for college, you fool. We didn’t go to college, why should you? Think you’re special? Think we’d waste money on something like that?

My family was so poor after the financial collapse that I got last year’s model Porsche for my sixteenth birthday. But with persistence and hard work, we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and got that black man out of the White House.

We were so poor I sold my hole for a box of cereal

Never went on a vacation as a child. As an adult I went on two vacations & stopped because I was agitated by not having any work to do. I could be home painting, cleaning the house, clearing the gutters, washing windows.....

We could afford dog food but we couldn’t get a dog.

:(

Jesus Christ OP, I thought my family were the only ones who did that. Glad to see that somewhere in the world I had a poor soulmate.

Some poor kids used to brown bag their lunch to school.

Our lunch WAS the brown bag.

We ate the deer dad hit with the truck.

Wait R10

You skipped dinner

Mom could only afford one pair of shoes for school. So she gave my brother the left one, me the right one and sawed off our opposing legs.

Coats on top of blankets on really cold nights.

I had one pair of pants and three shirts through the entire eighth grade. They were hand-me-downs from my brother. Six pair of underwear and six pair of socks. Those were bought new at K-mart before school started and dad made a big deal about having to spend "all that money on Goddamn clothes".

Never got a Christmas present I asked for. Got cheap imitations that immediately broke. Had a relative in my father’s family who thought they were better than I was who always got the exact present asked for who would make fun of my broken gift. They *were* better than I was. Better food, better clothes, better parents, better school district, well groomed while I walked around with ringworm picked up from a stray kitten. My parents never took me to a dr. Just said “Don’t pick at it.” Better siblings. Never had a sister deliberately get pregnant at 15 so she could get married as soon as she was16. Mother made her give baby away.

It was not fun being the poor, ignorant relative who could never hold their head high.

Christmas 1983 I got a Hot Wheels car and an O'Henry chocolate bar as gifts. The next day my cousins came over and my male cousin asked what I got for xmas. I showed him the car and he made fun of me for being poor. As they were leaving he asked my father if he could have the car and dad gave it to him as a present. At the time I didn't know who I hated more, my cousin for asking for the car or my father giving it to him.

You should have offered him the O'Henry, "lightly used".

When the other kids said I was full of baloney I cried because it wasn't the least bit true.

Hand-me-down Christmas presents from our “rich” friends. Loved wearing their clothes to our same school.

We were so poor that we spent one Christmas in a church basement eating swill served to us by three horny old ladies and what appeared to be a very angry tranny. Then the angry tranny’s John showed up and gave us toy fire trucks. What the fuck was I going to do with that? Thanks a lot trashy Santa.

In my elementary school, there was a really good "snack bar." All I could do was watch kids buy stuff during recess & lunch. Never had extra money for snacks, at least not from the school snack bar. Maybe that's why, now, I'll buy a whole bag of Tostitos and keep it all for myself.

A neighbor ripped the antenna off of our car to beat a bill collector, we replaced it with a bent wire hanger. Our second hand radio goit stolen from the car and we kept the hanger where it was until we had to use it to open the car door because we locked the keys in it when we were at Kmart.

Going out and walking around looking for change in the hopes of finding enough for dad to go out and buy smokes. Not doing homework, or playing with friends. Looking for loose change. If we were lucky we'd find a pop bottle which was worth fifteen cents.

We traded cars every 3 years.

R30, I snort-laughed snot.

My mom collected bread bags through the year, and then when it rained or snowed we wore them on our feet inside our boots because our boots were so old and used they didn't keep our feet dry.

Going to my uncle and aunt's house with our parents and watching mom hint around that we needed new shoes in the hopes that our grandfather would offer $20. After getting nothing we'd have to sit there and watch our cousins model all their new back to school clothes while they slobbered all over our grandfather saying thank you for the nice things he bought them. On the way home mom would cry to herself while dad drove without saying a word.

My father getting me to break into the neighbour's basement window to steal beer and food. They were on vacation and he hoped to replace everything before they came home. He didn't and acted surprised when they said they'd been robbed. They never spoke to us again. This was the summer of 1977.

We could not afford to fix a car which mysteriously backfired randomly every few minutes. In a traffic jam, the cars around us were all shattered nerves and dirty looks. We were the Clampetts.

R35, for real?

Sadly yes R38.

We had tarpaper on our house and no air conditioning. It was unbearably hot in the summer, and big flying cockroaches would come up through the floorboards.

We pretended squirrels were in our walls, fighting at night. But we had occasional evidence those were rats.

Oh wow. My heart is breaking for these stories. Mine aren’t as bad: wearing hand-me-downs from the people my mom cleaned house for. Paying for groceries with food stamps. Our TV broke and we didn’t get another one for years. It was embarrassing to not be able to discuss the latest episode of “Square Pegs”. “Why don’t you have a TV?”

Oh, Lord, R42. Did you play the “tv is stupid card”? I hated acting like things that were manifestly cool - and that I desperately wanted to be part of - were stupid.

Oh, Lord, R42. Did you play the “tv is stupid card”? I hated acting like things that were manifestly cool - and that I desperately wanted to be part of - were stupid.

On the sunny side, I’m rich now and do ridiculously stereotypical things like eat caviar and go to the Amalfi coast.

[quote]What is your SHORT example of how you grew up poor...We got a smaller second-hand black and white tv that we sat on the broke color tv as a stand.

Wow, you must have been poor if even your old color tv was broke.

R44, yeah, I had “better” things to do, or I thought it was a stupid show anyway. We were able to watch shows on the weekend at our dad’s, so I’d try to steer the talk to things I had been able to see, like “Knight Rider”.

Whenever we went somewhere with a TV, we just wanted to watch TV.

we were so poor, i had government dental care. and it is about what one would expect.

also had to beg for shoes without holes in them, and then they cost a whopping $20, which i had to be lectured for.

our are was so poor, the poorest (even worse than my family) student had scabies and had to be personally quarantined. of course, since we were similarly poor, she was a friend of mine.

Our neighbor down the road was a pig farmer and once a week he made the rounds of area grocery stores to pick up all the expired dairy items to feed the pigs.

He stopped at our house on the way home so we could pick out items we wanted from the back of his pickup truck.

It was 1931 for eighty years in our house.

Televisions were oddly expensive in the 1980s I remember. I remember looking for a small TV set about 1986, and discovering they all cost over $150, which was considerable money at that time. Then my wife came home with a B&W 12" or so inch screen, that she found on sale at a department store for $79.

We were so poor we couldn't even finish a sent

R26, classic. I was waiting for you to chime in. This thread was made for you. 😂.

On a serious note, after reading the above posts it appears that you all have overcome your childhood poverty and done well for yourselves. That’s something to be proud of. I didn’t grow up wealthy, but somehow we all survived, and I think we’re better for it as we appreciate the value of “things.”

I got earth shoes for school, always one size too big, so they lasted the entire school year.

“You’ll grow into it” is the curse of poor children, r54

I got earth shoes for school too.

Made of actual earth.

We were allowed one popsicle per day at the beach club canteen when I was a kid. No sandwiches, no hot dogs: ONE popsicle.

It all went on layaway. It never left layaway.

It all went on layaway. It never left layaway.

I never got hand me downs, because I'm an oops baby; last of 10 & the kid before me is 7 years older. Yass!

R54.

We couldn't afford the membership to the Indian Hills Swim Club. My quest for the perfect tan was put on hold until I had graduated college and could afford my own membership.

Oh, the humanity!

In the 70's we carpeted our family room with a patchwork of free carpet samples. Our floor looked like the side of the Partridge Family bus.

R62, your family room carpet sounds like Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors."

Lots of meals with government cheese.

Playing a game of I spy on the car - but it could only be things you spotted through holes in the floor in the road below.

When we all graduated from Brown my friends got apartments, more control of trust funds, and one got a Gulfstream. I got 600 bucks.

All the other kids dads drove Cadillacs and Lincolns.

My dad drove a Chrysler.

Dinners of only rice flavored with a beef bouillon cube.

The few times we had a telephone it was a party-line

Christmas gifts like a pair of socks and popcorn balls.

I wore some of my sister’s hand-me-downs. She’s 9 years older than me.

Still traumatized.

R10. Nope, thrift store didn’t exist in my little town

I am not a child person, but if my child didn’t have a winter coat, I would have found a way to one fir my freezing child.

We couldn't afford a Christmas Tree. We just painted a big red X on the floor with LEAVE GIFTS HERE next to it.

We couldn't afford gifts either.

Where we got the money for the red paint I'll never be the one to tell.

One thing I’ve learned is that people always enjoy feeling superior to someone. If you’re poor, it makes other people happy to dole out scraps as long as you’re properly grateful. It’s a whole thing.

We couldn't afford to have pets.

We had to wait for the neighbors' pets to die and then dig them up.

I'll never forget playing with my dog, Maggots.

We couldn't afford M&Ms.

We had to settles for just plain Ms.

I didn’t have a winter coat & wore the same pair of shoes for 4 years in HS. I told everyone my shoes were so great that I refused to wear anything else. I borrowed a jacket from a friend. It was brown corduroy. It belonged to her sister. I wore it from September til January sophomore year & my friend said I had to give it back. I was hoping her sister thought she lost the jacket, because she’d gone off to college in AZ and certainly didn’t need it there. But she came home for winter break.

We got 3 shirts , 2 pairs of pants and one pair of shoes for school every year. My father resented every penny spent that wasnt on his booze or racing car hobby . Yet he wouldnt allow my mother to work . Even when he got to the point where he made very good money,he was still a miserable cheap fuck . On the other hand,when he died , he left my mother almost a million dollars . She spent like a drunken sailor .

[R75] sounds like she deserved it!

[quote]What is your SHORT example of how you grew up poor?

I grew up poor.

R35, R42, R43 = hugs from me as I sob.

I remember my aunt, who lived on social security, saving and re-using those styrofoam trays the raw meat comes on at the supermarket. She would wash them like dishes and save them. I don't remember what they were actually use for. Also there were always wet paper towels hanging up to dry all around the kitchen so they could be re-used when they dried.

Dinner = cans of beans with cut up hot dog.

Dessert? Never.

My parents never took me to DisneyWorld.

I was watching a sitcom and someone asked “Does anyone want seconds.?” and I asked my mother what’s seconds? And she said “Rich people have extra food, We don’t.” I said, “I want to be rich.”

I’m not rich. But people eat too much food these days.

These stories are making me laugh and breaking my heart at the same time. Poverty is really cruel.

[quote] When we all graduated from Brown my friends got apartments, more control of trust funds, and one got a Gulfstream. I got 600 bucks.

Besides your 600 bucks, you had your degree from Brown University, same as JFK Junior.

R82, it’s not because I’m poor anymore, but I don’t make huge amounts of food for my family, and I serve small portions.

On one of the other threads here, about socioeconomic differences, someone observed: wealthy moms ask “did you enjoy your meal?” And poor moms ask “did everyone get enough to eat?”

R85, my brother sent a picture he found of our Christmas dinner in the mid 80s: ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and green beans. And one pumpkin pie. We thought it was a feast.

When I was 6 my mother got me a toy train for Christmas that blew smoke. A few days later it was gone and she said she had to take it back to be repaired. I never saw it again, I think she bought it so I would have something for Christmas but took it back because she couldn't afford it.

How did communities get by without thrift stores? They were a basic part of my hometown economy - and that was before they became a hipster staple in the 90s.

Gun racks in the back window of the car. There was a while there if my dad hadn’t been a hunter we wouldn’t have had much to eat.

When we went grocery shopping, if I was well behaved I could pick out 1 thing for $1. (and believe me, if I so much as did anything that week that was deemed ill behaved, it got taken away).

The shoe stories reminded me of the time I broke my leg in July but didn't get the cast off until October and I had to wear my one pair of school shoes with the left shoe with two months of wear and the right hand shoe was brand new. I was embarrassed but knew I wasn't getting another pair of shoes so complaining was futile.

R35 gosh that’s heartbreaking. My grandad was the only one in my family that got me and got him - except knowing am gay. Everyone else in my family can GGF’d. He wouldn’t approved of me being gay, but still would of been there. He was a gentleman and saw thru shit, yet was polite. Sorry you had to go thru this.

True story: When my parents first got married they were cut off by their parents, who didn't approve of the match. My mother had a pair of glasses, but my father's broke and he couldn't afford to get a replacement pair. Once a month or so their big date night was to go to the movies. During the exciting parts my dad would grab my mom's glasses so he could see what was going on, and they'd "fight" over the single pair of glasses for the rest of the film.

Growing up, we had oatmeal for dinner a couple of times a week. We were really poor, but we kids didn't know it at the time. We always knew people worse off than us...

Our car broke down and we traded it for a 1929 Buick. This was in 1965.

I was nearsighted, but never told my mother I couldn’t see the chalkboards at school. I knows she didn’t have the money for glasses.

^Knew. Now I use reading glasses.

^Knew. Now I use reading glasses.

My family never got a car.

We got a car. But only until the owners tracked us down.

Not poor but my parents never spent money on the kids. We had to buy every single thing ourselves. My mother is physically incapable of giving anybody anything. I thought we were poor for years until I was a teenager and realized it was my mother’s inability to spend money.

^My dad was like that. He always had money for some scheme, but not his children. He owned a construction company and practically gave new houses to a couple of family members, but we lived in an unheated farmhouse. We had nothing for dinner one night, so he bought himself a steak.

Then, as we grew older and my mother FINALLY divorced his selfish ass, he told everyone our mother turned us against him. I had nothing to do with him at that point.

we weren't just poor, we were trashy and I have a million stories but this one sums everything up:

when my mother banned my grandmother contact, I no longer had home sewn clothes. I had 2 changes of clothing and impending puberty. I would go home, strip, put on my nightgown, hand wash the outfit (in the bathroom sink) I wore that day and hang it up to drip dry in my room.

it never really dried well and I was 11 years old. I was the stinky kid. then I was the really really stinky kid.

My parents somehow found money for a color TV, beer and cigarettes, bars - but we kids never had decent clothes, shoes, dental care, etc.

Our old dilapidated house didn’t have heat on the second floor where the bedroom was. It was originally heated by a pot belly type stove with a grated opening above it so the heat would rise. But that was long gone when we moved in. Always wore my winter coat to bed in the winter. Could see your breath in the morning.

For my 10th birthday, I got a digital clock because my parents could not afford the clock/radio.

All 5 of us kids had cavities in some of our teeth so there was almost always one of us with a toothache at any given time. I didn't see a dentist until I was over 18 and had dental insurance. I remember having weeks of dental care to repair what been been neglected my entire childhood. I never saw a doctor either. My parents just never had the money for that kind of basic care.

Worn out clothes. The soles of my shoes flapping. My teeth were rotten and painful. We ate crap. Filler mostly. Tuna casserole, pizza, etc. I am still low income but I have learned how to live a quality life with meager means.

More than once my parents split a can of soup or skipped dinner so that the kids would have enough to eat. Funny thing is if we tried to offer our parents what we had my father would get angry. I don't know if it reminded him that there wasn't enough food, or reminded him that he didn't get to eat because he had so many kids he couldn't really afford.

My mother had to cook our meals in my Easy Bake Oven.

Stoll a roll of toilet paper from school in elementary school once a week. All my crayons were broken bits other kids tossed.

R79 The aunt sound like a hoarder

Christmas - a couple weeks afterwards, my mom would return all my gifts behind my back (Transformers, Lego's, Laser Tag, etc...)

We were very rich, Op. so I can’t relate.

Powdered milk. Nasty stuff.

We went to the gas station down the block on the corner to take a shit when the water got shut off until we could afford to pay the bill.

We were so poor we waited outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken to lick other people's fingers as they walked out.

I specifically remember hand me down underwear from boys in our church.

R114, was it the Milkman brand powdered milk? I remember drinking that at a neighbor's house. Must admit I did not enjoy the flavor. I always just thought it was just a preference (Milkman powder versus half-gallon containers of milk). Now, I realize that my neighbor was kind of poor.

The weird thing was that my neighbor's mom would buy expensive clothes for herself and was a housewife.

I also remember these same neighbors (the kids) being allowed to have their own foods that they bought with their own money. The kids would hide candy, etc., inside their bedrooms. Or, buy something perishable and it would be labeled with their names in the refrigerator. There was some pilfering going on in that household.

To the people who posted truthful and heartfelt memories of such poverty, thank you. I am moved that you all made it to today. Imagine the miracle that we can share hardship via the internet with people all over the world. You should be proud that you had the resilience to become adults who have probably made a secure life - even if you aren't rich or middle class.

I hope the USA finds a way to share the wealth because there seems to be a lot of it and I know there are still really poor and hungry kids today in the USA.

I know its not just USA among rich countries where there are still poor people. I have a Swiss friend who grew up extremely poor and part of it was the society was so sexist back then, a divorced woman didn't have much power to get the ex-husband to pay any kind of support.

Just last night some some smiling handsome african drug dealer said hello to me - are you having a good day. We ended up having a long conversation. He was a immigrant from Gambia who spent a year in Italy, illegally, and made it now to Switzerland, illegally. The politics of immigration aside. My god you couldn't believe the poverty he grew up in and he said his experience in Italy was very bad.

Also the other day I read some long articles about the situation in Syria where families don't even have tents and are sleeping outside in ruts in the cold and snow - all tents and abandoned buildings taken. The kids are dying of cold.

Poverty sucks and it seems really immoral when so many people are so rich.

End of my meandering contribution.

Our car was stolen while we were at the half-price matinee of “Hardly Working”. I’ll never forget my mother’s anguish. It was a 25 year old piece of shit used car, anyway. Eventually the police found the car, totaled, some teens having taken it for a joyride, they assumed.

We had to walk to the supermarket that was about a mile and a half away. I routinely walk that now, but as a kid, it seemed like forever, and we all had to carry the groceries, too. We had to rely on the kindness of friends and acquaintances. It was humiliating. Eventually she found another old car to buy.

It hurts my heart to think of how she scrambled to meet our needs and sacrificed for us. Coming up on a year since she died, and I hope I made it clear how grateful we were for it. She was a very difficult person, but she did right by us, and at least she lived in comfort for the last third of her life.

Our perpetually broke down car was “in the shop”, which probably meant my parents were scrounging for money to get it out.

Our also-poor neighbors let us borrow their 40 year old pickup which we crowded into. And my poor mom drove that awful truck with no power steering.

Until my late teens I, and my siblings, did nothing. We went to school and came home.

Sometimes we'd visit relatives but that was rare. We never took vacations, or went sight seeing, or went to the beach or amusement park.

We never did anything that would cost money and we never did anything free because it would cost gas or bus fare to get there.

We were never permitted to play with toys other kids had because according to our father we'd want them too and he wasn't going to waste money on toys.

R111, it was just the styrofoam meat trays and the re-used paper towels. The house was always clean and orderly. Although the basement did have a fair number of what seemed like treasures to me, but nothing like a hoarding situation. She was born in 1922 and grew up during the Great Depression so it's probably related to that.

we weren't poor but my dad was a tightwad. I remember he screamed at me for buying a mechanical pencil at walgreens when i was 9. He never took us anywhere.

Powdered milk bags, strawberry Qwik to try and disguise the taste and aftertaste. Really outdated summer shorts hand-me-downs that my mother could never say no to. They were cutoff denim jeans from thirty years earlier with a funky old smell. Discounted bread. Canvas shoes that lasted only a month with good care, but needed to last all school year.

When I wanted to buy snacks or a comic book I would usually gather empty bottles from the neighborhood, even in the corner sewage drains, rinse them, take them to the supermarket and get about 30-40 cents and take the money to my local candy store and by a comic book and snacks.

I did that too R126, but out of sight of other kids. They loved to holler SCROUNGE! at anyone picking up empties. A SCROUNGE! was apparently more despicable than the parents who tossed the beer bottles at the ball field, or onto the floors of their cars. If you played sports as a kid, and got a ride home with a friends’ parent, it was always littered with beer bottles on the car floors.

R125, I forgot about the trips to the discount bread store. I liked it because my dad would buy discounted fried pies.

Lemon was the best.

My father was always doing stupid shit. Just stupid. We were grocery shopping one night when he made a deal with the manager to buy a cart full of damaged items.

That was also the night I snuck an extra half gallon of milk in the cart. Drinking milk as a beverage was forbidden.

My grandparents (Italian immigrants) gardened & canned. My family happened to live near a place that raises horses and sells manure. My grandmother would save egg containers, egg shells, and coffee grinds to help start some of the seeds in her kitchen window. But I was completely grossed out when my dad would rototiller the horse shit into their garden to help them plant it.

Picture this, Des Moines, Iowa 1976. A family of five with no health insurance and no money. My parents couldn't afford to have me circumcised and the kids at school nicknamed me anteater.

We were so poor we couldn't afford to grow. I am still only 14 inches tall.

OMG R129 ,my father was the same way about milk ! I shit you not ,he would spit in it to keep us from drinking it ! I thought it was some weirdness on his part , but maybe theres some depression era reason behind it !

r129, r133 - We never drank milk in our house either. Or cereal. We ate oatmeal. To this day I can't eat oatmeal.

We never ate cereal from a box or bag. Every morning, my mother made oatmeal or cream of wheat in a pot. She had to prepare breakfast for a family of nine, and that was the cheapest way,

Every night we mixed up a gallon of nonfat milk from instant powder. It tasted better if it was chilled all night long.

I saw color TV at my friends' houses, but we had one black and white set in my father's bedroom and one really ancient black and white set for the children in another room. I never realized that The Wizard of Oz switched to color until I went away to college and saw it happen in the common room in my dorm. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was 1981.

We never went on vacation. I guess my father couldn't figure out how to take a family of nine anywhere without it costing a fortune.

We regularly received huge bags of hand-me-downs from our neighbors, who had large families like us but were better off. We happily tried them all on to see what fit and wore them proudly to school. I don't ever remember going shopping for clothes, except for shoes shopping on Labor Day weekend, when my father would buy seven pair of the cheapest sneakers he could find (for the new school year).

In our 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house lived 4 generations. Great grandmother, grandparents and great aunts, parents and me and my brother. My brother and I slept on cots in the basement. It was tight quarters.

R136 I’m imagining Charlie and all his grandparents in one bed.

We weren't allowed the use the whole packet of 'seasoning' when we made ramen; you had to save half of it for some other meal.

I remember the first time I bought new clothes in a store. I was 12 years old and in foster care and you get 50 bucks a month for personal items like clothing and tampons etc. I felt like a million dollars and completely overwhelmed. i bought purple and black striped pants. it was the mid eighties and it was kmart. kmart may as well have been Bloomingdales, i felt that special.

Funny isn’t it...the postwar period was the richest period for the US ....but so many of us were still poor.

I grew up in the 80s, but my parents were children of depression-era parents. And that had a huge impact on my parents and how they raised us (and spent $ to raise us).

We were not poor but my mom would not let me drink milk except in cereal. When I was born in 1950 our family doctor told my mother that milk makes kids fat and not to feed me milk. My mother had a phobia against fat. I don't like milk that much but now I am lactose intolerant.

R132, people like you on here are so easy to spot.

Grew up in LA without a car. This was in the 80's before light rail and ride share folks. Can't get any poorer than that. Had to rely on the kindness of friends, family and neighbors when we needed more than a bus. I live car free now by choice as I live on the East Coast now and have a 97 walk score in my neighborhood. But to this day, I try to avoid rides as much as possible. Sometimes it exasperates my friends when they want to drop me off somewhere and it's not out of their way--I always decline. Unless it's horrible weather and/or I'm sick or injured, I would rather walk, take public transportation or pay for a ride.

R132 that’s a good one, that’s funny

R144 Did Speed totally freak you out for awhile?

We were so poor we couldn't afford a time zone.

We never went on vacation, ever. No one in my family graduated middle school before me. Three generations lived in 2 bedrooms. I didn't go school shopping for new clothes if my old ones still fit and I only got new glasses every other year. I went to a private school on a scholarship for the very poor and everyone found out, so that was a great time.

Sizzler was like a five star restaurant the few times a year we went....

Canned asparagus.

We had BETA when everyone else had VHS, for years!

Powered milk!

Eating a packed lunch in a food court.

Sitting through movies - even the ones we hated - twice, because if we had spent the money we were going to see it again, God damn it.

The one exception was when my mother took us to see Slapshot because she knew it was about hockey (which we loved) but had no idea it was an adult-oriented film.

We were out of that theater after the first five minutes. I think she did get a refund.

geez some of these behaviors are quite whacky, besides the many that are sad and humiliating

R131 No Medicaid for the chop? Did you end up getting the chop Sofia?

Packet mash potato - always - and made with powered milk.

Holes in my shoes that i just had to deal with.

Found out later in life that my mom's landlord didn't charge us rent for 3 years because she felt so bad after my father abandoned us. But we eventually were evicted.

Living in a car. That was fun.

Waking up to go to school (when we were living rent free at my childhood home) and seeing food on your porch from a neighbor or church member (my father was a pastor; typical he'd bail on us - but thank the god I don't believe in for those people. They fed us for a long time). And just devouring that food with my equally starving sisters.

Cement bags to take lunch to school.

We used to live in a hole in the ground covered by a tarpaulin.

Mom buying "patterns" to try to make clothes on her sewing machine in the 80s. The clothes were never right and they reeked of "poor".

Wearing clothes from Goodwill and St Vincent de Paul that never quite fit or matched.

Going to the Elks and the Moose at Christmas for the free gifts for kids.

Cleaning the main church and chapel because it was a way to pay God back for the occasional free meals the nuns would share with us.

Not crying when a coach or trainer would buy me a new jock or cheap sneakers for gym.

We were good people, just damn poor and not able to get ahead. Both parents gone now, but I wish I could've done more as a kid to help them.

well, if a new coach bought me a jockstrap, I would have tried it on right in front of him, right over my raging boner.

I worked odd jobs when I was 12, but my parents had to use the money to pay bills. My dad had $5 left to our collective family name, and I threw a royal fit that he use that $5 to buy a pair of foldable sunglasses that I needed more than anything in the world because "IT'S MY MONEY!" He begged me to let him use the money for some family bill but I kept my fit up.

He bought the sunglasses, and I broke them the next week. And he was nice enough not to say anything about it.

I was embarrassed that I only had one ugly pair of shorts to wear to community day camp. I was tongue tied with shame and couldn’t talk to the confident, bronzed kids with nice clothes. I tearfully confided , whispering urgently, to a glamorous, beautiful blonde counselor that we were poor and that was why my clothes were so bad. This was the beginning of my life as a drama queen.

We never really went without, except for having to eat crap food a lot of the time, and never going on vacations. No college help whatsoever. My parents were divorced and my mother worked 2 jobs throughout most of my childhood and put everything on credit cards. Ultimately I found out she had declared bankruptcy twice. She would buy more clothes and toys than we needed, but it would have been better to just have a parent around once in awhile. Instead she fobbed us off on our grandparents who had to take care of us and feed us most of the time.

I can't say we were dirt poor - most basics were covered - but we lived paycheck to paycheck.

We knew when you could write a check at our little local grocery store so that it wouldn't hit the bank account before Dad's check went in on Friday (answer: Wednesday after 4 pm)

My father would religiously buy generics or dented cans for the discounts.

We didn't get cable or a VCR until almost a decade after most of my friends had it.

I respect my dad raising 4 kids on a tight budget, though. He sold the house a few years ago and walked away with a decent amount of money, because he was reluctant to ever be in debt. Our fun neighbors who always had new stuff and were constantly remodeling? They lost their home for back taxes.....

R128 I remember the bread outlet stores more from when I was out of the house.

There were a few years after I came out where I was almost homeless and lived on next to nothing. Lots of bread outlet purchases. $20 or $25 had to stretch for at least a week if not more like ten days - peanut butter, bread, spaghetti, maybe some ground beef to make sloppy joes or meat spaghetti if I was lucky.

And endless ramen.

School supplies was a big headache. We used prior years' notebooks with the written-on pages ripped out, and the teachers sometimes were dicks about it, calling us out for not buying brand-new notebooks even though we must have looked the picture of frugality in hand-me-downs that ill fit our skinny bodies.

I fake coughed a lot every day to cover my singingly loud stomach.

School fundraising was a bitch. No I can't ask my parents' friends to buy chocolate they won't get for a month because they don't eat chocolate bars and they don't have any money.

^i always buy school supplies for the kids in the local schools. I don’t care for children, but every kid needs new school supplies for a new school year.

R 169 It was shitty of those teachers to be such cunts about the notebooks

R169 I grew up poor in a poor area, so most teachers were used to poor kids, but in 5th grade my class got a teacher who was fresh out of college and married to a member of the wealthy family who owned the town.

That is inspiring, R171. How do you handle the logistics of giving free supplies to kids at a school?

A can of peanut butter but no bread.

Hippies did not have TVs.

Kids at school would ask where I got my "new" dress. Didn't know how to answer. Was always so humiliated. They were either hand-me-downs from my 4 older sisters or rummage sale clothing. This was before "thrifting" was chic. Kids can be so cruel.

When I started babysitting for spending money I went to JC Penny's and bought some pretty new clothes. Family screamed at me, as they saved every single penny earned for college and said I should do the same thing.

R173. One of the local grocery stores has a school supplies drive every August. I load up, pay, and leave them in the collection bin

Sometimes i’ll give them to a teacher I know. I always askshe gives them to the kids who need them them the most.

R21 Same here.

Best thing San Diego County ever did was to offer dirt cheap group swimming lessons, starting at age 6, at La Mes's Community Pool. Discounted if you had multiple children participating.

Later I learned that TPTB were fearful poor kids might drown as so many of us regularly went to the ocean to swim. San Diego's beautiful beaches were a relief if you didn't have air-conditioning.

BF asked how come I knew how to cook a turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce all from scratch but didn't know how to cook a steak. Turkeys were cheap as was leftover homemade bread and cranberries.

Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

[quote] Sizzler was like a five star restaurant the few times a year we went....

I hope you got to try the Malibu Chicken at some point.

Our "going out restaurant" was a little bar my dad went to all the time. They had a small dining room that I swear, looked and smelled like an adult bookstore's back room (a comparison I learned later, of course).

Mom and I would share a pitcher of soda and a pizza that had to be 9800 percent sodium, while dad had a few beers and then, of course, drove home. All of that was $10.

Not mine, but my dad’s. He was dirt poor in Europe with a drunk loser father. He and his siblings would steal eggs and vegetables from neighboring farms, and forage in the woods for nuts and mushrooms and berries. They would also get up early and drink milk from the cows’ teats. Squirt it right into each other’s mouths.

My housewife mother baby-sat and took in ironing.

Two parents, six kids, one car: a used, two-door hatchback; only 4 of us could travel at once.

We didn't get running hot water until 1997. I grew up bathing in a jagged-edged metal tub filled by kettle.

Just add to my post at 187, it took me years to get used to showering and I still hate water running over my face.

R185 I was born in 1982. In 1985, my family lost our home and moved into a trailer in a rural town. We got running water in 1995.

[R189] LUXURY! Our water was too poor to walk. It sort of limply crawled.

I was so poor I couldn't afford an orgasm. I had to dance around the room making funny faces and then flick teaspoons of expired yogurt at the guy.

We were so poor we couldn't afford to have a scary monster under the bed.

Just Uncle Jim.

Oh, the school supplies, r169. I wanted a Trapper Keeper so bad. NEVER go it.

I also wanted a cool metal lunchbox like all the other kids. But my dad said it would rust and be a waste of money. Instead, we had some awful brown paper bags that we reused over and over. Worst part was they had some stupid teddy bear printed on them.

We ate generic Hamburger Helper with a tiny amount of low-grade beef. I realized how poor we were when I went to my best friend David’s house for dinner and was served wonderful meals. I was determined to bring “that kind of food” home to my mom and brother since I was the older 13 year old brother. One afternoon David’s stepfather asked me what kind of underwear I wore. I was confused but told him Fruit if the Loom. He said if I gave him the underwear I was wearing he would give me TWENTY dollars!! I asked why and he said he was doing a secret project and not to tel anyone. He would give me a new pair of underwear when I was give him my “used” pair, so that my mother wouldn’t notice. We kept this exchange up weekly for several months. I bought groceries with the money and my mom was so happy. I told her I was doing odd jobs around the neighborhood. I was proud to put wonderful food on the table for those months, even that I now know what David’s stepfather was doing with the undies!!

I brown-bagged throughout grade school. Usually PB & J, fruit, and Twinkie; 5 cents for 1/3 qt carton of milk.

R194

OMFG!

R194, Your undies story brings a tear to my eye.

R195, Same as me but no Twinkie nor a dessert.

It makes me sad to hear what some of you had to endure growing up.

gov't cheese

Ever get the govt potted meat, r200?

they had MEAT, R201 ?

Along with welfare cheese, you could also get these awful gigantic cans of potted meat. But if you cooked them down with barbecue sauce, they were actually pretty tasty. I think government cheese is tasty too

Wasn't there also government peanut butter? I vaguely remember this. Definitely remember the god awful tasting cheese. But we ate it, nonetheless.

Gov't cheese and peanut butter was good. The rest, not so much.

You could get those items plus food stamps if you were really in a pickle.

For those of you who grew up in large families (lots of kids), did you ever feel resentful of your parents for having so many damn kids? Not trying to be mean, I come from a large family (not rich) as well. It just seems stupid for couples to keep on having kids if they're struggling to put food on the table.

Yes R206. We were seven altogether and my parents never made enough to keep us in even relative comfort, much less luxury. I would look at my uncle and aunt who had one child and they were well off even though they made less than our parents. I was the youngest and would have gladly given up existing if it meant my older sister wouldn't have to work on a farm just to get free vegetables.

I am a graduate of the LA Unified School District. 'Nuff said.

I grew up middle class in mixed class neighborhood in the NY suburbs in the 60s and 70s. Large families were the norm for working and middle classes. 4-6 kids Was very common. The parents often grew up in LARGER families - 8 kids, and a few dead ones make 10 total. Immigrant and 2nd generational strivers had large families in the first half of the century. Often a kid or two would die. Birth control was immoral. My parents tried to stop at 3 and got 4. I knew rich catholic families in the suburban large homes of the time with 6, 7, 8. Mothers didn't go to work until the mid 70s in my parts. Jewish families were 2 or 3 kids!

Just saying parents might not have really thought about limiting because of culture and religion.

My parents were Roman Catholic, so birth control was out of the question. They stopped having kids when my mom started sleeping on the couch. She was pregnant at least 10 times, but only seven pregnancies made it to term.

If I was the dad I would masturbate and visit professionals instead of knocking up my wife so much.

Working class dads couldn't afford regular visits to hookers. Many dads of that era saw kids as labour.

1950’s: Parents were divorced, dad was a drunk who often didn’t pay my mother $18.50 per week in child support. Mom waitressed and married second guy, co-signed a loan before he departed...you know the rest. Kids are smarter than they’re given credit for. I was lucky to find some non-family mentors who helped me overcome the environment, get to college and have a career, which allowed me to help support my mother in her later years.

My parents had 3 kids and were told that because of the last birth, my mom would not be able to have more kids. Of course, that meant no birth control.

Of course, that meant we had the baby (mid 70s). My mom didn't tell her mom about it because my grandmother would have been upset. So when the baby was born, my dad called my grandmother, told her, and she accused my parents of "having one for the pope".

We weren't catholic, and Grandma knew that. Still, I think that was funny what she said.

We was so poor that we learned the meaning of "Don't chew your raw tater too much before you swallow it" in the worst way the next day.

We lived outside under a tin roof near the beach, and ate sand.

We were so poor my parents couldn't afford a middle name for me.

I don't get it, R215.

I don't either.

I'm guessing R215 has something to do with diarrhea.

That thought had crossed my mind, but taters don't usually cause the diarrhea, do they?

IIRC raw potato can swell in the stomach. It's why, unlike other root vegetables, they are only served cooked.

They're served cooked to reduce toxicity.

r79, my grandmother grew up in extreme poverty in the Depression and also used to dry and reuse paper towels, aluminum foil, plastic bags. Actually, when we were cleaning out her house after she died we found an entire dresser drawer filled with one legged pantyhose stockings, with a leg cut off. My mother surmised that if she ripped one leg she cut it off and basically wore two pairs so both legs were covered.

We grew up without television or a phone. I remember being horrified in grade school any time a teacher asked for our phone number.

Parents had several apartments and a cottage. The renters always had heat, we’d leave the stove on when we ran out of oil. Thank God for the renters even though it didn’t bring much money it was enough to feed us and pay the taxes, without we’d have lost the house.

What’d you tell them when they asked for a #, r225?

That time daddy came home and said he sold the boat!!! And bought a SMALLER one!!! I was horrified! When he took us down to the harbor to show us the new boat, I was mortified! I felt like everyone at the yacht club was staring at us and laughing!

I wore my two elder brother’s hand-me-downs and was told that “patches were cool”.

With 7 children, you had to be quick at dinner time to grab what you could or all that would be left is brussel sprouts.

R228, I got a new pair of jeans only once that I recall. And my mom put patches on the outside of the knees. Even when you got something new, it still felt crapped up.

When Grandpa died, Grandma put her three kids into two separate orphanages. I think the two eldest were in also in an orphanage before Grandma met Grandpa, too. My Grandma was resourceful, but there were times the family was literally dirt poor.

My Dad had a heating and air conditioning business, but did we have central air? Oh, no, certainly not! Actually, I think that’s kinda funny.

R26 we’d use the older neighbors number next door or my aunt. My mom would shrug and say telephone service was a “luxury”.

My dad was frugal. A lot of things (furniture, etc.) that should have been outdoors were inside the house. There was one particularly ugly, homemade shelving unit made of wooden beams, painted brown. That was inside. So ugly, it shouldn't even have been outside.

As for R215, people in dire situations, starving, would eat potatoes nearly whole so that when they passed through one's system they could be washed off and reconsumed.

Diarrhea?

Swelling in the stomach?

Of course the DL has never heard of the Warsaw Ghetto.

9 people in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath ghetto house.

We weren't poor but close to it. My parents, 5 kids and my grandmother in a 3 bedroom, 1 bath house. Our cars were always disasters. My dad was an electrician. My mom was a secretary. Dad was out of work for long periods of time and he drank. There were 3 small closets in the house. I don't know how but we always had meat, potatoes and a canned vegetable for every dinner. We went to Catholic school and we brought scrambled egg sandwiches on buttered toast in brown paper bags for lunch. By the time we ate them, the butter and eggs had soaked into the bread and they were delicious. And we had incredible Christmases every year thanks to my mom stashing her overtime away all year. Even with my Dad's alcoholic rages, I remember my childhood as being so happy.

Same here with happy childhood, r236. It’s only when I got older that my father explained how awful we had it.

For us kids, though, our friends were just as poor, so we didn’t notice.

And we thought we had a great time (except when our parents told us decades later that we were miserable).

My mom worked at a seafood market so I remember feasting on escargot and shrimp while living in a 3 room rat-infested apartment.

R233 You poor man! I don't know how you survived a childhood with an ugly shelving unit in the house!

not sure if I posted...my brothers and I grew up in a very nice house in a the best part of an okay town; the street was beautiful. Let's put it this way: if I can ever buy the house back (my mom had to sell it when she got old and moved to assisted living), I will; so it's a nice house.

We went on trips, college prep schools, if I needed new clothes, I got them.

What we didn't have was a dad; he died when I was 5. Older brother was a prick. Mom was trying to keep it together. I was bullied mercilessly in school and coped the best way I knew how.

So, my 'poor-ness' was not having a dad; no one to help with homework, the bullies, sports. all that stuff that most kids with dads have.

I, too, went to school in still-damp clothes hand washed in cold water. It's physically painful to wear wet clothes on a cold day.

Our government cheese place had a giant frozen government cinnamon roll. This one tasted lightly of freezer burn and made me sick as a dog.

But one of the sure-fire ways to tell you are poor is public humiliation. My mom had me buy one twelve cent packet of Kool-Aid with a $1 food stamp so we could get coins for change. If I did that 15 times at different days/times/locations we could pay our heating utilities bill. A store clerk scolded me, said "go tell your mother I know what you two are doing, you should be ashamed of yourself, don't come back here.". I already felt ashamed for my life by age 8 and did not need this tongue-lashing. Thank God for the teacher who spotted evidence of my high IQ. It was my passport to a magnet school and better life. But what do plain kids or kids with gifts that are not valued get?

Well smell you. Thank god you weren't poor and plain, too.

I think the worst part of growing up poor was never going to a dentist. When I finally got a job with dental insurance, I went for the first time. The years of neglect were expensive to treat and took years to repair.

[quote]My mom had me buy one twelve cent packet of Kool-Aid with a $1 food stamp so we could get coins for change.

Why is it parents of poor families always make their kids do things like this? I remember my father sending me to the store to buy two cigarettes with change and being laughed at by other customers.

My mother sending me to the local Italian butcher's to ask for bones and scraps and being humiliated as he tossed them at me like I was a dog.

Short example?

Beans.

Beans could be a fairly long example, if you know what I mean.

I am with you r244 I can remember being sent inside the water company to pay the water bill to get our service restored with pennies,nickels and dimes. Also being sent to the corner store with a note from my mom saying it was okay to sell us a pack of Gold Pall Mall's bought change because she never showed her face there.

R244, some people just shouldn't be parents either financially or emotionally.

Even my own mom admitted she wasn't the most instinctively maternal figure.

Case in point: she taught 3rd grade in my grammar school; my 4th grade teacher brought her the school project to show her what she was doing (this is when my mom was new to teaching and other teachers were helping her). I said well, now, I can't surprise you like the other kids.

My mom said: Oh, honey. You're never good at those projects anyway.

Um. Okay.

I guess my point is a lot of people grow up poor emotionally. Some have both. Some have neither.

[quote] I think the worst part of growing up poor was never going to a dentist. When I finally got a job with dental insurance, I went for the first time. The years of neglect were expensive to treat and took years to repair.

R243, I'm glad you're dealing with your dental issues. I know people that have dental insurance but avoid going to the dentist, really phobic, I guess. Going to the dentist is painful (literally) for me, so they give me novocaine or lidocaine before they start working on me.

When I turned 16 I didn't get a car, but had to use the service vehicle, one of those Wagoneers with the fake wood.

r240, I think you're idealizing dads and imagining that you would get a good one. Our dad didn't help with any of the stuff you listed: homework, sports, bullies. He provided no support or encouragement whatsoever to any of his 7 kids. We also existed on the edge financially because his problems relating to people meant inconsistent employment at best.

He would tyrannize and bully us with his epic tantrums, rages, insults, and physical abuse, especially when he was home without a job. Our lives would have been much better without him, and we'd cower in fear and hide and dream in quiet moments of "not having a dad," if you know what I mean.

[R244] [R247]. I think it's because they think the child has the best chance of accomplishing the goal. I guess it's better for the family to have a member embarrassed but get the bill paid or the goods for the meal, than for another to come home both embarrassed and empty-handed.

With my mom the tasks were for the fam. Only my father would have me doing sh... that solely benefited him. The cigarette example above resonated with me. I used to have to ask the (vaguely pedo, but that's a different story) Korean grocer to add cigs for my father to his tab. More often than not I'd hear, "no, tell him pay his tab.". This was as early as first or second grade. I cannot even imagine asking a child to do this.

This was so humiliating, I've never told anyone. My mom told me to talk to school administration to "correct' my age so I was one year younger. And the school administrator point blank told me he wasn't going to help us get one more year of welfare. And he was right.

I was so embarrassed and angry at my mom for putting me up to it. And angry at myself for doing it and that it took the administrator being that blunt with me to see how obviously wrong it was. But being poor, it didn't occur to me to question my mom.

My mom raised my sister and I on her own. My dad never paid child support after they divorced. He worked full time in construction, but always got paid in cash.

As such, we were on welfare/public assistance in a small town. I went to school with the son of my mom’s welfare case worker. He tortured me non-stop, always asking if I had any food stamps he could borrow or threatening to have his mom take our “check” away. He even some how managed to get a box of commodity cheese and sat it on my desk at school in front of the other kids and said “My mom said to give this to you, your mom left it at the food stamp office yesterday”.

Karma has been kind to me and little Micheal since then. He became a raging druggie who died a horrible, long death with each of his organs shutting down because of some tainted heroin he shot up with, bought by his prostitute wife, who has AIDS.

I’m a medical doctor who has three homes, four rental properties, 5 million in the bank, and a husband who is a former college wrestler and still has the perfect ass to prove it........

Also, I found out he was in the hospital I once worked at when he was dying. I paid him a visit, told him exactly what I had wanted to say all those years ago and then spit in his face. He was still semi lucid at the time. I went home that night and fucked my hot husband in our million dollar home like it was the first time and then planned our anniversary trip to Greece. Micheal died a week later- too poor to even have a funeral. He was cremated and his ashes tossed in a pond.

I would have traded everything I had to do what I did to Michael in the hospital, but because of Karma, I didn’t have to.

Talk about l’espirit d’escslier, r234!

Mary!

R254 I hope that's satire. Shudder.

R254 youre no better than he was in the long run . Shame on you. I wouldnt want you as MY doctor .

We were so poor.............

For all of you who need a happy ending for the asshole who mentally and physically abused me for being poor and on welfare for nearly five years, here you go:

A GoFund Me was set up for Micheal’s funeral expenses. Wasn’t very much because like I said, he was cremated and the druggie girlfriend dumped his ashes in a pond. I went to the funeral home and paid the entire debt and asked to remain anonymous. The reason I did it was so that the lowlife sack of shit would forever be indebted to his victim, the kid who spent years never being good enough because of this asshole.

Poverty is the ultimate abuse on a young person’s life. Yet, it helped me have a life that i never imagined. It also gave me my ultimate revenge. Anyone who thinks I’m wrong for feeling this way has no idea what I dealt with.

Go to therapy, R9259. You need professional help.

Listen R259 , nothing you can say will ever justify the absolute depraved maliciousness that you , an alleged doctor who took an oath to do no harm , showed towards a dying man . SHAME on you .

Oh Mary!!!! Perhaps I’ve misjudged. It’s not the fact that I had the last word on my abuser in such a unique manner. It’s the fact that you haven’t and probably never will.......

And exactly how did I harm him? Ethically, medically, and legally, I violated no standards of care. He died by his own hand. I never treated him professionally, nor was I ever in charge of his care. I would have done the same thing if I had seen him in the street.

[quote] I never treated him professionally, nor was I ever in charge of his care.

Your oath is wider than that. Much. You should know that.

I wonder if his makeup woman (predictably a bleach blond big-tittied girl past her expiry date) purposely sets out each morning to make him look like a clown.

Whoops r264, wrong thread, but you know who I'm talkin' about.

My mother’s meatloaf contained an entire box of RITZ crackers. At least it wasn’t the generic brand. So we weren’t THAT poor.

If you had meat and brand-name crackers r266, I'm betting your mom just had a really bad meatloaf recipe r266.

R267, unfortunately, not she learned about “stretching” the meat from a penny pinching magazine and tripled up. There was maybe a golf ball’s worth of ground beef (I HOPE it was ground beef) in the loaf.

She was a single mom who was a retail manager with two boys. We certainly didn’t have it all that bad altogether, but there were a few REALLY tough years. Luckily, my favorite meal was biscuits and gravy. On my birthday she made it with hamburger crumbles.

No French fries or drinks at McDonalds, just burgers.

Back to school clothes from Zayre or Venture only.

R254 is bull. Nobody growing up in poverty goes to med school and makes millions. That’s some Boomer bootstraps jerkoff fantasy, just like the revenge story.

I had a pair of green jeans from K-mart that I thought was just the best ever. It didn't take long for me to figure it out--cool kids wear blue jeans and K-mart jeans are for the poor ones. I remember my mom asking why I didn't like them anymore after wearing them all the time. I also still wore Converse high tops when I was in the HS school basketball team when Nike Jordans were the hottest items. I could hear people from the stands make fun of my shoes during games. They were calling me Larry Bird for those who know the NBA. I didn't want to invest hard earned money into the latest basketball shoes because the team sucked and we weren't going anywhere.

I grew up middle class, there were no obvious socioeconomic differences that I was aware of among my peers, especially when I was very young. I feel bad about how I treated a girl in 2nd grade who was most likely impoverished/living in difficult circumstances. She was new to the school and I knew she was living with relatives. On class picture day all of the other girls were wearing dresses or at least pants with nice shoes, and most of the boys were wearing ties. I was wearing a tie and a sweater vest (I still have a thing for sweater vests). This girl Erica showed up in jeans or corduroys, sneakers and a ratty old sweatshirt. This was in the early 70s when kids got dressed up for school, especially on picture day. I asked her why she wore that outfit on PICTURE DAY and she said she forgot it was picture day. I pitched a fit and asked the teacher to make her stand in the back because she was wearing SNEAKERS AND A SWEATSHIRT and was going to ruin the picture. The teacher told me to sit down and shut up, or I'd be taken out of the picture, and threw in a very heated SHAME ON YOU to me. I felt embarrassed that I got in trouble but honestly my seven year old self didn't know why I was wrong, since she was the one who forgot and was going to ruin the aesthetic.

I told my mom when I got home from school and she said maybe Erica's family is going through a hard time and picture day wasn't that important to them. Or that maybe she didn't have anything else to wear and I shouldn't judge people by their looks, and that I probably made Erica feel really bad. That sat with me for a long time. I never apologized to her and when we got the picture back I still think it would have had her better to be in the back row, but I didn't mean to be cruel and hurt her feelings.

She moved before the school year was over.

R272, what seven-year old cares about aesthetics?

A gay one, R273. A gay one.

R254 gets a 3 for effort and a 0 for originality. And a -10 for spelling. Micheal?

I live in Glasgow, Scotland. There is a charity here that you can donate school uniforms, shoes. winter coats, etc to. I give every year because I grew up poor, and the shame of being singled as such still burns. Kids are vicious.

1. No one in poverty can become a doctor and/or rich? How Trumpian of you! Next, you’ll be reminding we coloreds, queers, kikes, and lizzies that God only allows his chosen few to enter the heavenly gates- as long as they are as white and pure as his Klan robe.

2. My husband and I are both in the medical field and our combined net worth puts us in the lower millionaire tax bracket. Still, if he were to leave me, out pre-nup splits everything down the middle. I would still have a net worth of around 3 million total and many years left to grow it.

3. If misspelling a word causes you to compelled to discredit my truth and then make a weak attempt at cleverness, then I truly have compassion on those around you who have to tolerate your extreme behavior, which is more indicative of self-esteem issues than you probably realize.

4. To those of you who have shared very personal, even painful stories about how poverty impacted your childhood and perhaps continues to do so in adulthood, I wish us closure and even acceptance that things weren’t our fault and we didn’t deserve the things that happened. In all honesty, I don’t know if I can ever get to that level of closure- go ahead and troll me all you want for that.

r270 - I went to school with a very poor girl from a single parent family, who grew up and became a doctor, is extremely successful, and has done very well financially. Why do you think poor people don't become doctors or become successful financially?

God, why are doctors always such tiresome narcissists outside of their work lives. I swear every one I've dated has been 'a bit off'. Not worth the time.

[quote] What is your SHORT example of how you grew up poor?

Hmmm, I only have an poor example of how I grew up short.

I never thought of my family as poor, but the memory this thread has brought up is being 13 and having to use my older sister’s already used Tampax. I’ m a boy, but my mom was fastidious about keeping my tighty whities pristine.

[quote]I felt embarrassed that I got in trouble but honestly my seven year old self didn't know why I was wrong, since she was the one who forgot and was going to ruin the aesthetic.

Nothing to do with being poor, but I often use similar examples to illustrate how children are BORN gay.

Aesthetics are very much on the mind of little gaylings.

I'm gay enough but never thought about aesthetics as a child.

R283 Honey when I was 6 my parents put me in my own bedroom because my brother who was a year older wouldnt keep the room clean and kept messing with my "decor" !

[R254] Your story would be detestable even if you weren't a doctor.

Since you are, might I remind you that spitting on someone with an immune deficiency goes way past the boundaries of revenge and straight into actual assault.

MARY! me all you like.

He gave you a hard time when you were both kids. He didn't rob you, rape you, push you down the fucking stairs.

Have a giggle - if you must - over his painful demise and get on with it. That's called "being an adult".

()f course the likelihood of this story being anything but fiction is practically nil.)

We did not have cable TV in the pool house.

When I left home for college my parents would not allow me to move my horse to a stable near my college!

My family was the working poor with so many unwanted and outdated hand-me-downs from others. I wished my mother would say no once in awhile to other parents foisting old clothes on us.

Yet I could’ve befriended a kid that showed up mid school year but didn’t. The kid needed a haircut, never had anyone brush their hair, and the clothes were too small. My parents asked me who the new kid was and why I didn’t befriend yet. All I could think of was, the kid always had a runny nose. The kid didn’t have anyone to care about them (I didn’t know that then), so the snot stayed on the face. The full package kid with plastic rain boots stood out so bad in gym class.

My very young parents divorced when I was 2, then my mom remarried when I was 5. My stepdad paid for my mom to go to college to get her undergrad and graduate degree. He had a graduate degree and worked as a hs counselor. We always lived so poor, but my mom did a phenomenal job of convincing me that other people who lived in real houses (we moved from apartment to apartment all the time) were trash because they ate Chef Boyardee and twinkies. TV was for idiots too, until we got one when I was 10. 3 new outfits for fall and winter, 5 new outfits for spring and summer, from Kmart or Sears, always purchased at one time, growth spurt be damned. Things were better in hs, because there were 2 incomes, so we’d go to a small beach town motel twice a year for a weekend, but we’d bring our own food. I never went to a McDonald’s until I started working at age 15, because I hated my life and knew $ was the way to change it. They did not contribute a dime to my college education, even though they were well educated themselves. My mom hated my financial independence, and because she was young and stylish I would ask to borrow her clothes. She would offer to sell them to me instead. I actually paid her $125 for a raincoat that she said was a steal. I was making $2.50 an hour at the time. During my last year at home (I moved out at 17) my parents bought a really nice house, and a second home with an ocean view at that beach town. So they were clearly saving to go big once I got out, but we lived such a miserly, mocked by others existence.

My aunt married a man who grew up on a farm in Holland. During the war, his family survived by eating tulip bulbs. He was ambitious, came to America and went to Harvard. Even after he became successful he was resentful of other rich people who had an easier life than he did growing up. He would say that he married my aunt because she had good teeth.

I needed a baseball glove for gym, and mom got one from school's lost-and-found, which would give away items that had not been claimed after 30 days. It turned out to be owned by a classmate who lost it and had his parents buy him a new one. This was discovered in gym class in front of everyone. I gave back the glove.

After my best friend got a new Nintendo game set in 1986, my parents bought me a used 1982 Atari from a yard sale for $5.00.

We were so poor, that all five of us in the family shared a big bed. We didn't have heat. We had to huddle together and the occasional farts would help keep us warm.

When our car was stolen, we had to walk to the supermarket and carry groceries. It wasn’t terribly far, maybe a mile and a half, but we were too young to be left home. I was terrified that someone we knew would see us. It was a long time before my mom found a junker to buy.