so.......got any poor stories to share?

happy new year!

so last week i was chatting with my mom while she was getting her chemo treatment. anyway we had a good convo going about how lucky we are and how tough they had it. basically she was telling me her poor days and for some reason even though i've heard some of the stories before, this time it hit me different. made me open my eyes to others out there.

anyway i as she told me this one story i actually remember parts of it as this was one of the first times i saw my mom cry. my bro, sis and i were really young and one year in Nov my dad got laid off work and my mom started to cry. she was worried because she was not sure if we would have "real" food for dinner that week and then now with the bad news she was sure the dinners would come down to whatever she could scrounge up. She told me for a while there all we ate was rice with soy sauce, old wilted veggies that she bought from the "cheap bin" at safeway and thin thin slices of chicken or some sort of meat (thin so we could have some left for the next day). lots of fruit salad for lunches as she also bought the overripe or bruised fruit from the cheap bin. christmas came and she made us gifts but was not able to scrounge up a special dinner so she gave the three of us a thicker slab of chicken and more veggies while her and my dad had only plain white rice.

anyway all is well now. but i guess stories like this really made me appreciate all that i have and all the friends and family i have to be with during the holidays.

i know this is kinda a weird thing to ask but do any of you have any poor stories to share? maybe your parents or someone you know? or even stories of survival/near death experiences. something that made you really appreciate the life you live.

we were "mac and cheese with hot dogs cut up in it for dinner" poor, not "sleep in a car" poor

as a 7-9 yo i recall going through some lean times with my parents, and only eating lima beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner. no idea why or the details behind it (both parents have passed) but to this day i can't eat lima beans.

when i was quite young we lived in a one-room shack somewhere in the US (we were apparently moving gradually from california to washington state) and i recall my dad saying that bears used to walk through the back yard. i have memories of being really cold.

makes you appreciate what you have, and not take anything for granted.

Xmas, one year there appeared 2 gifts under the tree - one labeled "Boy, 10-15" and the other "Girl, 10-15". I'd been asking my mom what was up with those presents, but the question had been put off or avoided. On christmas day, as we went to open the presents, I forced the issue and asked again. My mom went quiet and teared up a bit and then explained that our landlord's church had decided we were a needy family. Up until that moment, I had never thought we were poor, but from then on I always felt like a second class citizen, and I began to envy all my 'rich' friends. I have never, nor will I ever assist a needy family via generic xmas gifts.

It was then also that I began to better understand why we had the same fixed rotation of weekly meals. Thursday was kraft dinner night; Tuesday was french toast, if I recall.

'course, then there was the time, standing in a grocery line checking out, and the cashier held the welfare food voucher over her head and yelled to the manager across the store: "I've got a welfare voucher I need authorization for…". Yeah… Nice.

I make a good salary now, but my wife spends like crazy… so It's still french toast one day a week…

I remember back in the day we would go for mcd's 20 piece chicken nuggets and get like 50 packs of honey. we would use the honey for sandwiches the rest of the week. most of the time it was lettuce and mayo sandwiches. if i was lucky i got some cheese and if i was really lucky we got a couple slices of bologna.

I don't think we were ever on welfare but I do know how much my parents sacrificed for their kids.

My dad was born in Hamburg shortly after the second world war and has some pretty good stories about stealing fruit from peoples trees, and scamming rolls for breakfast.
He lived with his three brothers and parents in a one room apartment that had a hotplate and icebox (they couldnt even afford the ice!)
I've never heard him complain though.

i ate rice all the time as a kid, breakfast lunch and dinner, my parents just told me last week we aren't even asian

thx to teh depression now we have 3.8 Acres of land that cannot be developed for another 5 years or so.

My grandpa (mom's side) got diagnosed with prostate cancer in its locally advanced state in late summer. Now it has metastasized to his back, causing severe pain and weakness. Because of his age they have told us not to go with chemo, and just be prepared. :(

On a less severe side, because of the snow (and laziness + NBR) I couldn't work on my car during the entire break, had to replace waterpump, timing belt, idler/tensioner, make an electric relay circuit for new mechanical fans, make brackets for the fans. I procrastinated until yesterday and pretty much ran in to a shitload of problems with the crank pulley remover being seized into the crankshaft, then I had to drill the core of the remover centre rod, yank it out with a flat head that was bent to a hook shape. Result being scraped knuckles, tons of cursing, blood blisters everywhere.

Luckily SFU got pwned by snow and classes got cancelled so I got 80[HTML_REMOVED]#37; of that done as of now.

My shoe fell off in the snow this morning. I managed to hop back to it before I put my foot down.

It's these things that make me feel greatful just to be alive.

I grew up on one of the poorest Indian Reservations in Alberta. My dad was a teacher on the reserve so while he pulled in a government paycheque, our neighbors, his students and their families lived off the land. I'm talking kids with no shoes the middle of winter, winter coats home made out of blankets. No money for even what you and I now consider basics, like running water and electricity. Any money that did come in, was usually sucked up by addicitions. My dad fed and clothed a lot of kids the 4 years we were there, not just his own. money was always tight, like GW we were "kd and hot dogs for dinner poor" but if we complained my old man would point us to the window and say take a look, your friend next door has nothing and that shut us up pretty quick.

Ok lets stop the KD reference as a baseline for being poor.

What you should feel bad for is poluting this fine culinary delight with cut up hotdogs.

Hotdogs go in a bun, KD get ketchup and pepper. /

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Wow you all sound like you had shot childhoods

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Wow you all sound like you had shot childhoods

well duh, all the ones that didn't aren't on teh interwebz.

My life thusfar has been very fortunate. Not West Van kid fortunate, but I've always been grateful for all the sacrifices that my dad and mom have made for us.

My dad has some pretty good stories of when he grew up in Hong Kong. He went from nothing to working his way up (with no college education since they couldn't afford it) into becoming a bank manager. Pretty neat.