Tuesday, February 15, 2011

I saw a woman on television once, maybe on 20/20 or something, in a segment about people who were feeling the crunch of the economy. She said, in all seriousness, with a lump in her throat and a tear in her eye, "I've had to teach my little daughter that she can't have everything she wants whenever she wants it. I cried when she told me 'mama, just go to the atm and get some money' and I had to tell her that I couldn't do that anymore." She was all broken up about it, like it was the worst lesson that poor li'l dumplin would ever have to learn. I laughed my ass off.
The show centered around some families where the professional dads had lost their awesome jobs and couldn't find new ones. Well, couldn't find new ones in the exact place they wanted. They didn't want to relocate, so they weren't looking anywhere else. OMG WHAT? You want us to....move? But we like this gated community!
So they were living off their savings. This was spoken about as though they were living off the blood of sacrificed infants. Oh Good Heavens! NOT THE SAVINGS!!! Isn't that what savings is for? Maybe I'm wrong about that. One particularly touching part showed a man who had been forced to take a regular people job, at (horror of all ungodly horrors) Sears. He tearfully told the camera that when old colleagues who were still in the Professional Asshole Association or wherever he had worked came in to buy whatever the hell they sell at Sears he would hide so they did not see his shame. Literally, he would hide.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess just...holy shit we are spoiled in America.

1 comment:

  1. Holy shit and pass the Tylenol! I laughed at this the first time I read it and again this morning. Good stuff.

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