stories of being poor

[ncba93ivyase]

when i was a kid my family was too poor to afford blankets

my dad would steal moving/packing blankets from trailers after he'd make his deliveries and we used them as normal blankets

they smelled like cheap ramen for some reason and the smell never came out, but they kept me warm

[ME##]

we had our water turned off for a few days and maybe the electricity once for a day or two, i'm not sure

[ncba93ivyase]

sometimes we had "snack nights" where our dinner was a big bag of chips and a jar of dip

i was a kid and liked this but thinking back to it it was really because we couldn't afford actual food lol

[ME##]

sometimes we had "snack nights" where our dinner was a big bag of chips and a jar of dip

i was a kid and liked this but thinking back to it it was really because we couldn't afford actual food lol

lol that was basically dinner tonight

[YPrrrr]

I feel like a bag of chips + dip is actually maybe more expensive than a cheap meal but idk maybe I'm just thinking of brand name stuff

I actually avoid chips and dip because it's like a combined 6 dollars which is too much

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

I feel like a bag of chips + dip is actually maybe more expensive than a cheap meal but idk maybe I'm just thinking of brand name stuff

I actually avoid chips and dip because it's like a combined 6 dollars which is too much

yeah i remember my parents refusing to buy dip because of this.

When I was in middle school i got my first pair of glasses. sometime in 7th grade they broke at the hinge so we taped them up, but they kept breaking. Once a week they would break. We couldn't afford a new pair of glasses so my dad broke a green plastic pen and melted the plastic onto the hinge to keep it together. this melted plastic fix lasted for three months or so? then it broke.

[LCK]

my dad worked at the local "recycling" center and i got all my childhood toys from there. Good ol leftover trash toys. It was also a good place to get.free paint

[piano moths]

i grew up not poor until my dad died and one time i ate two potatoes a day for like 10 days it was wild but thats it

[Daddy]

once we all lived in a single room in my aunt's house for like 8 months

another time i lived in a small storage room in an unfinished basement for like 2 years

[YPrrrr]

You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

once we all lived in a single room in my aunt's house for like 8 months

another time i lived in a small storage room in an unfinished basement for like 2 years

[Hiro]

for like 6 months i lived with my grandparents when i was like 12 and they just placed my bed in their office which is parallel to the living room and separated only with a giant archway
then after that we moved into a double-wide trailer next door to my elementary school janitor mr. mark who was my stepdad's good friend, but we actually shared the trailer with the guy who originally lived there for about 2 months, so my 2 sisters and i shared one room and this weird sleezy guy i didn't know had the room next door, and the place reeked of cigarettes.

also not really a poor thing but this reminded me of something very recent:
[spoiler]2 weeks ago my uncle's old friend moved back to phx but doesn't have anywhere to live yet, so until this past saturday or something he basically took over my room so i didn't have any privacy. also he has some kind of kidney failure so he had this giant loud oxygen machine that ran all night, he has night terrors so he'd sometimes shout things in his sleep, and he let his dog sleep on my pull-out bed (I have a day bed), plus he just had a bunch of stuff strewn everywhere so i usually couldn't get through to my bed (i have 2 beds in my room for some reason lol) so I just slept in my sister's bed. This sunday when I went to wash the sheets i saw they'd both been stained, one pillowcase has blood on it, and the sheets the dog slept on got some holes torn in them [/spoiler]

[Hiro]

other story I just remembered,
when my ex-housemate kicked my sister and i out of our house, for like the last week of the winter semester my sister and i were only "home" to sleep but would spent the entire time we were awake (and not in class) at the library where we'd rent a private room (it was free) and would just hang out in there and watch hulu or take naps or whatever, then we'd go sit in our freezing car and eat some taco bell leftovers we'd bought earlier in the day (that had just been sitting in the car)
also my sister was sick, and I somehow managed to have my best semester and also get my first job during that week

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

other story I just remembered,
when my ex-housemate kicked my sister and i out of our house, for like the last week of the winter semester my sister and i were only "home" to sleep but would spent the entire time we were awake (and not in class) at the library where we'd rent a private room (it was free) and would just hang out in there and watch hulu or take naps or whatever, then we'd go sit in our freezing car and eat some taco bell leftovers we'd bought earlier in the day (that had just been sitting in the car)
also my sister was sick, and I somehow managed to have my best semester and also get my first job during that week

the survival instinct is not dead.

I kind of went through that when I moved from georgia back to Asheville. I would spend nights bouncing from house to house (usually my sisters or a friend of mine's) I was trying to find a job there and move back. I found the chinese delivery job and began saving up for the apartment that I live in now. about two months I could really afford the place, my friend and I had a falling out and my sisters roommates were tired of me being there (despite my staying hold up in the room that was offered to me and cleaning the house and paying them a small amount.) So I ended up spending a lot of the winter sleeping in my car or on the truly cold nights renting a hotel for the night. I talked to my old boss at best buy and got my job back there and managed to save up enough money to have a little more than twice the amount needed for the apartment. Also thanks to my sister cosigning on a Lenscrafters card, my credit was good enough that I didn't have to pay deposits on any of my utilities.

[Classic]

When I was an infant, my parents would take turns missing a meal so my brother and I could eat. 

[??????]

when i first came to nyc i ran out of money so quick and became absolutely broke that i starved for a couple of days consistently for a couple of months
then i felt the value of 1 dollar because i couldn't even afford a dollar's worth of pizza
it felt like being trapped because literally everything depended on something that's worth more than 3$