I bought myself an iPod Nano for Chanukah. This is a big deal for me. It’s by far the most extravagant thing I’ve ever bought for myself…In fact, it’s the only extravagant thing I’ve ever bought for myself.
Every now and then I’ve run into discussions of economics on the blogs I read, and I always want to chime in as one of the voices of someone poor. I rarely do, though, because someone else usually makes my point for me; specifically, someone who’s worse off than I am. And I don’t kid myself: in a lot of ways, I’ve had a very charmed life. It’s a cliche to say that even if we didn’t have a lot of money, my family was happy and we loved and supported each other, but it’s true.
But still, the other thing. The part where we didn’t have a lot of money.
There was always a roof over my head, albeit one that leaked badly every March when the snow began to melt. Unlike the majority of kids I went to school with, we lived in a house and not a trailer, and both of my parents had decent, full time (or close to) jobs. We were actually relatively well off, compared to a lot of the town. But at the same time (as I recalled while reading Reflections on Barbie over at Thinking Girl) basically every toy I had was a low-cost generic brand version of the one I actually wanted. I can remember how desperately I craved Totally Hair Barbie (her hair was really long! and it came with real hair gel! and she had a groovy 60s-esque mini-dress!) and how disappointed I was when I didn’t get her for my birthday. I saved up the birthday money I got from my grandfather and aunt and bought her myself; she may well have been the only actual brand name Barbie I had. And basically everything else was similar — generic brand cereals, off-brand clothes from K-Mart and Sears. And lots and lots of hand-me-downs from not just my sister, but basically all of my friends (as I was quite tiny for my age).
But I never really felt poor (though I can remember asking my dad if we were, and he gave me a pretty generic non-answer), because basically everyone else around was in the same situation. But then came college.
See, most of my classmates didn’t go to college; most had no interest in it. I was raised from day one with the attitude that not only was it a good idea, but a necessity; I was destined to go to college and be successful. The subtext was that my success was also going to be, at least in part, economic. I can remember my mom being truly upset that they couldn’t afford to send me to college on their own and I’d have to take out loans — her parents sent her. But then again, my dad put himself through college with no help from anyone at all, so he didn’t see it as a big deal. But they were both agreed that was where my future was, and so I was raised with that message ingrained. So I did the school thing, got good grades, took out the loans (with as much help as my parents and other family members could give), and went to college.
Actually, I went to Brandeis, an expensive private college, well known for (among other things) being full of wealthy Jews. Someday I’ll probably write about what happened to me at ‘Deis involving Judaism, and my frustration with the school’s attitude towards it, but let’s concentrate on the wealthy part for now.
For the most part, I really liked my time there. In terms of attitude and personality, I fit in much better with my college friends than I ever had in high school. There were people who were real kindred spirits, with similar values and morals, who didn’t think I was a total weirdo. On the other hand, there wasn’t anyone else who was, well, poor. Or whatever it was I was — I have trouble saying “I grew up poor,” when I know there are so many people so much worse off than we were. And so I had friends who were well off, if not genuinely rich, and only one or two friends who were actually middle class and also had scholarships and loans who did workstudy like I did, but even so, there was a big difference between our backgrounds. It was incredible culture shock.
The best way I can think of to sum it up is this: during my sophomore year, a friend was getting together a whole group to go out to dinner. He invited me, and I said I couldn’t go; I didn’t have the money that week. He offered to stop at an ATM on the way. I stared at him for a really long time, and finally it dawned on him that for me, not having the money really meant not having the money, in the bank or my wallet, a possibility that had never even occurred to him. I was embarrassed and angry; he was mortified at what he’d said. It was an eye-opening moment for both of us.
Since college, the holidays have always been awkward for me. It’s not that I don’t like receiving gifts (I do! I do!), but I don’t like having people spend more money on me than I can spend in return. Not a huge deal in high school, where we generally exchanged cards and candy canes, but in college I had friends who could and did spend a lot more money on me than I could in return. And even though not a single one of them ever so much as implied disappointment at the gifts I was giving, I still felt weird about it.
Things got weirder last year, when I was living at home. Every spare dollar I had went to saving up to move; I went months without buying so much as a book for myself. I definitely couldn’t afford awesome gifts for friends — I got them what I could, usually a book or two, and felt rotten about it. Yeah, that makes total sense: giving gifts to people I care about made me feel bad. Gosh.
Then there’s the jealousy issue. I have a LiveJournal and every Christmas, my friendslist is flooded with lists of holiday haul. Apparently, my friends are mostly pretty affluent; every year, it’s a list of video games (and gaming systems), iPods, DVD box sets, new computers, and money. The worst point was a few years ago, when what I desperately wanted was an iPod; what I got was a book. I stopped reading my friendslist for a couple days, until talks of the holiday were done. I love my friends (both online and offline ones), but the economic disparity between me and most of my friends is never more evident than at the holidays. And I felt (and still feel) awful about that; jealousy is not pretty. I hate feeling petty and angry, especially when it comes to things that are basically beyond control.
Anyway, that’s why this year is such a big deal to me. I only work part time at the moment, but am pretty well paid; my job had screwed up my invoices, and finally corrected things last week. I deposited more money into my bank account than I’d had in it since, well…ever. And though spending so much of it probably isn’t wise (what with those pesky student loans and bills coming every month) I actually feel quite good about the holidays this year.
Good enough that I actually bought something expensive for myself, for the first time ever. Good because this year I don’t feel embarrassed; good because I earned this money doing work I love. I didn’t expect it to be so exciting, but it is. (Now if only I had health insurance and could see a doctor about the damn cough I’ve had for two weeks, things would be darned near perfect.)
