Archive
03/01/09
Down
How could it possibly have happened, so all-fire fast? It seems that just last year, Me and my family were riding high-hog On our three ATV's, two Bombardier Ski-Doos and Sea-Doos, My spit-shined-chrome Harley-Davidson Sportster,
And my dream job (overseeing Verizon's new-accounts department For California, Oregon, and Washington state), Raking in beaucoup earnings of 170 grand annually, Commingled with my wife's supplemental fortune (From teaching her Pilates, step-aerobics, and yoga classes),
Had landed us in America's top 1.5 percent of its most affluent — No Fortune 500, mind you, No successor to Warren Buffett, as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, But no couch-potato slouches, either, Margie and me, Coming from "not much, really" parents. We were there...
Until, that is, my layoff, eight months ago. Then my unemployment dried up, and now my health benefits, With Social Security a good decade away, If, that is, anything's left after Obama's stimulus shoots craps. Today, I'm working for a friend's janitorial service,
Making stopgap wages mopping halls, cleaning urinals, For a mealy seven bucks an hour. What a dizzying adjustment — The sense of identity loss, empty self-worth, Discouragement dragging you down into despair's lair, Where depression waits to consume your gonads, guts, brains. Maybe the worst thing about this...this (What do you call this monster threatening all of us?)... Is the way it makes no bones about cutting us down to size, Paring our dignity to the bone, leaving us bare-boned — Big Kahuna now just any other low man on the totem pole.
It's been five months since I've made a mortgage payment. I've sold all my toys, on Craigslist. Foreclosure's barking. Margie's been diagnosed with breast cancer. My COBRA's gone. Caring for three kids and us, on fifty-six bucks a day... How much further down does down go before it's down and out?
03/01/09
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