Reply #41: When I was using WIC coupons [View All]

my husband was in college using his GI Bill.

Sometimes I drove my neighbor's car because mine kept breaking down. Sometimes I drove the Jordanian friend's car - especially when he was back in his own country on breaks, he asked me to drive it to keep it running.

Sometimes I would buy cigarettes - you should have seen the looks I got then. Nobody in my family smoked. I hate it, I am anti-smoking. But the neighbor who loaned me her car was a smoker, she had two kids, one handicapped, and it was hard for her to get out to run errands. We would also pool resources to go to the cheaper fruit and vegetable market 20 minutes away. If one person was going, they'd go around to several neighbors and get a combined list so we didn't have to each spend the time driving out there, and more importantly so we didn't each have to spend the gas money.

I got really sick of the self-righteous grocery police making comments or glaring because I hadn't submitted my grocery list to them for approval, nor had I submitted my car for their review.

My thoughts on anyone using public assistance: They deserve the same basic decency anyone else would deserve. Living in poverty should not mean that every idiot in line after us has the right to inspect our habits, tail us to the parking lot, jump to conclusions, and make us feel like we are living in a fishbowl every time we use one of the WIC coupons. It's humiliating enough without being put in the position where we feel like we have to justify everything we do to total strangers. I've done that, you know - after feeling someone's eyes burning into the back of my head, I've actually apologized to a complete goddamn stranger for what I was buying, and explained it wasn't mine. Have you ever had to do that?

It's on a par with overweight people being glared at if they eat an ice cream cone in public - it's a chance for everyone around them who wants to play concern-troll to pass judgment.

I didn't appreciate being made to feel like everyone around me was going to go home and talk about my shopping habits. It's been a few decades since I had to deal with that, but I still feel my skin burn reading stuff like this being posted about us on a public forum so we can get a group together to discuss whether those poor folk are making good decisions or not. It confirms for me that what I thought was behind those glares was in fact very real.

Here is the deal: People on public assistance don't live how people like you live. I know that's hard to understand if you've never been there. They have more communal property and habits, because they have to in order to survive. If one person has a car that works, it will become the group car, and someone else who uses it will in return babysit for free so the car person can get to work or go to class.

What's odd is that up until this thread, I thought it was only our shopping habits that were up for public debate. I had no idea there was a concern that poor people maybe should just stop going to school after high school. I apologize if your sensibilities were hurt - or anyone else's, for that matter, because we had the nerve to use the GI benefits we earned. That should really just be a benefit for rich people.