Just as you're finally dropping off, the alarm rings. You hit the button and clean yourself up. Maybe you bought the hand soap on sale, or you splurged on something that smells nice. The shampoo is cheap, though, and you purchased it during a sale week with one of many coupons you clip out of the Sunday newspaper you can barely afford to buy. Next job is waking up the kids so they can get ready for school. Billy is out-growing his shoes, shoes you just bought at the beginning of the summer at Payless or Walmart or Target. They're already falling apart and they cost way too much money. Tia is wearing her cousin's hand-me-downs. Not quite fashionable, not quite fitting. The jeans hover an inch above her ankles, earning her the nickname "High Waters" at school. But she dresses the best she can and keeps her chin up because she has determined that there are more important things for her to concentrate on.
You don't think the kids are being bullied at school because of their clothes, but they never tell you. They learned years ago not to whine and cry for new clothes or designer label. New clothes only come at Christmas when Santa is feeling somewhat generous (and your paycheck has gotten a bonus or you managed to cram in some overtime hours).
Breakfast is oatmeal or the cheapest cereal from the grocery store. The cupboards are filled with boxes and cans of processed food because cheese and produce is expensive. A bunch of bananas will last your family a day and a half. A gallon of milk about the same, because the kids love dairy. Dinner tonight will be Hamburger Helper. Meat's expensive too, but you've managed to get a fairly large pack of ground beef (that was on sale because it's almost expired). Steak and pork and chicken are all luxuries. Maybe once a month there's a chicken dish. Pork maybe once every two months. Throw the fillets in a pan and cover them with inexpensive baked beans. There's a quick and easy meal for the whole family. And even if you have more fillets than people, it'll be gone in one meal if you don't remind everyone they can have only one serving because the other serving is leftovers for tomorrow.
Ty is down with the flu, you think. You'll have to figure out how to get him to the doctor's office because the second-hand clunker you paid 800 precious dollars for has broken down yet again and you can't afford to get it fixed. Or maybe its just that you can't afford the gas to fill it this week. Each time you gas up, it's never a "fill up." You do it one gallon, maybe two, at a time. Depends on if you have a five or a ten on you. But before that, you have to call him in sick to school. Just one problem. You haven't had phone service in six months. It's too expensive. Forget about cell phones. You don't have the credit to get a real one and the pre-paids, while a nice idea, still cost money to fund that you just don't have. So you'll use your neighbor's phone, or haul over to the laundry mat and hope that the ancient payphone on the wall is still there and still functioning.
But if you leave the kids alone, any of them, some idiot neighbor who doesn't like you and whose kids are always fighting with your kids will likely call Social Services on you for leaving your kids home alone. Child Neglect they call it. Because everyone knows what a sucky parent you must be to not have a phone, not have a car, to work odd hours and holidays and never have steak in the house.
Still, you can pay the bills. Sort of. The mortgage / rent is always the most important. Electric and gas can occasionally be let to slip a month or two so long as you don't do it too often. Unfortunately, you can't float checks with your spouse, moving imaginary money from bank to bank while waiting for the next paycheck. Back in the 70s you could do that, but bank technology has changed since then. The internet and instant communications will bounce those checks faster than pissed cobra will strike. And neither of you can afford the overdraft fees. Hell, you can barely afford the checking account given all the poor-people fees piled on because you can't keep a balance higher than $25.00. But how else are you to cash your paycheck? The penalties are worse for people with no bank accounts at all, getting charged an arm and a leg at payday loan / cash checking places. Even the grocery stores and Western Unions won't help you out. So you pay the $3 or $5 each month, watching that money drag your small amount of income to an even lower level.
But don't worry. You're middle class, not poverty-stricken. After all, you have a roof over your head, food in the pantry, and clothes for the family. You have a television, even though you can only afford cable for a few months at a time, and a charity-gifted computer, even though you don't have internet. You've never learned how to do anything past the basics on your computer, so you're unaware of the trojans and the viruses and other malware you and your kids inadvertently downloaded through websites and email during the rare times you had access. Thing is, you're smart enough to avoid the obvious scams. It's all those damn little popups. The kids just wanted to play games. Tia didn't know she was logging into a porn site until she got there. And none of you knew it was a fake.
The roof is leaking, btw, in one of the kids' closets. It hasn't gotten too bad, which means the insurance won't cover it yet. And your deductible is huge, the better to keep the insurance rates low, which means fixing it now will be all out of pocket. So, that's another thing on the list to worry about. But first, fix the kids some PBJs for lunch (because they don't quite qualify for the free lunch program. You apparently make too much money for that). Shuffle them off. Ask to borrow the neighbor's cell phone by shouting out a window (if they'll let you) and call Ty in sick. Then comes the fun task of figuring out which spouse gets to stay home with him. Apparently families used to live on a one-person income. Not you. Both of you have to be working and since you both get paid by the hour, just slightly above minimum wage, and you don't have that much paid time off (if any), you're going to have to sacrifice another bill on the altar of childhood aliments.
But at least you both have jobs, unlike some people you know.
After work is switching off on childcare duty while the other spouse goes to the evening job. Laundry, dishes, dinner, and other chores top the charts. The children are required to help out, but more than likely you'll have to follow up behind them because they still don't get that letting Fido lick the dinner plates is NOT dishwashing. And hiding their dirty socks under the bed means they won't have socks to wear tomorrow.
But now the dryer's broken, so it's bundle everyone up with baskets of dirty clothes and haul off to the laundry mat that you can barely afford. That's next week's gas down the machine, along with packets of laundry detergent that you had to purchase because you forgot you were out at home. Some much for watering the dregs out of the bottle. It made you forget to pick up the detergent when you were at the store.
Judgmental people are staring at you for bringing your sick kid along. Billy and Tia are amusing themselves by racing down the aisle with the wheeled baskets. You try to yell at them, but your voice is going and you're exhausted from the long day. Finally you lose your temper, grab them by the arms and force them down into hard plastic seats designed in a torture chamber. They cross their arms and sulk and suddenly everyone is staring at you for being a parental bully. You just can't win.
When laundry is done, you drag it all home, with the kids dropping half of it on the sidewalk on the way back. Then you get them cleaned up and put to bed. You're awake long enough to write a note to the spousal unit about where dinner is, then you throw yourself at your bed worry about the bills for next week and do you have enough food to get to the next payday and DAMMIT! You forgot to fill out Billy's parental consent for the field trip that you can't afford to send him on anyway and Tia wants to join band, but you can't afford the instruments, but maybe you can push off another bill so your kids can have a semi-normal school experience. At least you're not worrying about gangs or drug abuse like some of the neighbors are. Your kids are good kids.
But they will never know a life outside of the hourly-wage grind because you can't afford to send them to magnet schools or on summer excursions that will give them something to put on the college application forms. That's what you think, anyway. And how can they get life skills if they don't have access to social circles because of their clothes and lack of disposable income?
These thoughts twirl through your head for hours before you finally fall asleep. Then Fido starts barking at some damn stupid thing, waking you up. You get him sorted, start to fall asleep and hear Ty crying out in a fever dream. So it's by his bedside half the night, making sure he's okay, has taken his medicine (that you had to sacrifice another bill to pay for), and is sleeping. You don't know that you have insomnia. That's something Other People Have. And even if you do have it, you can't afford to get help for it. The kids are more important and the crap insurance you have from your employer doesn't pay for "unnecessary medical expenses."
At some point, the spouse comes back and crawls into bed beside you. And just as you're finally dropping off, the alarm rings.
Time to start again.
