Being Broke [View All]

[WilliamPitt]

It occured to me the other day that everyone has been writing and reporting on what is happening to the economy, why it is happening, who's to blame, etc...but I haven't seen anyone write about what it is like to have it happen to you. Thus:



Being Broke
By William Rivers Pitt

Wednesday 25 March 2009

He who knows how to be poor knows everything.

- Jules Michelet

Being broke means knowing about Coinstar machines and where the closest one is. Usually they're in the back corner of the local supermarket, right between the bank machine you can't get money from because your account is overdrawn and the counter where they sell the scratch tickets you're not quite desperate enough to try just yet.

Used to be you'd have to go to the bank and get those little brown coin sleeves. You'd have to sit at a table with the pile of change you'd been collecting in a mug or old vase and sort the pennies from the nickels from the dimes, always putting the quarters off to the side because you need those for the laundry machine or the parking meter. You'd load up the little brown sleeves with coins, toss them in a bag, and turn them in at the bank for some folding green. It was never much, and it took forever to load up the sleeves, but it was money.

With Coinstar, however, the little brown sleeves never come into play. You just have to load up a bag or a pocket with your coins and jingle your way to the grocery store. You dump the coins into the tray of the Coinstar, the change goes clinking and plinking into the maw of the machine, and a little screen counts it all up for you. While you check the little side tray to see how many buttons and Canadian coins got rejected, a little slip of paper is printed telling you how much money you just handed over. You take the slip to the service desk, and they give you the cash. It's never much, but it's money.

Being broke means not having cable television, which is going to get interesting once they do the much-ballyhooed switchover to digital. For now, the airwaves are still free, and if you can afford a television and are handy with the rabbit ears, there's always something on to fill the hours once occupied by the job that disappeared out from under you. Being broke means knowing where all the gas stations are, and which one has the cheapest regular unleaded, but being broke means leaving the car parked because you can't even afford the cheap stuff, can't afford the car, and don't have anywhere to drive now that the job's gone. There's always the bus, unless you dumped your change for the fare into the Coinstar.

Being broke means ignoring heat, gas and electricity bills for as long as possible, because those guys are always the ones who wait the longest before shutting you off. Being broke means hating and despising the mailbox, because it always has some bad news inside waiting for you, because it is the symbol of your failure to manage things. Its partner in spite is the telephone, if it still works, because a ringing phone all too often means another bill collector is reaching out for money you don't have, so you don't answer, and it rings, and rings, and rings.

Being broke means you can't pay the rent, can't pay the mortgage, can't pay the credit card bill, can't pay the student loan, can't make the car payment, can't pay tuition, can't buy the medicine, which means having to borrow, which tastes like slippery metal in your mouth. "Neither a lender nor a borrower be," said William Shakespeare, which is fine for a guy getting paid by the Queen but doesn't always work out quite that way for everyone else. Your credit is shot and you have no collateral, so no bank will touch you. You meet a friend and try to steer the conversation into whatever vein will let you broach the question without feeling humiliated, but you always do anyway. You call a parent and hang your head and wring your hands and feel hot blood crash into your face because you are so very, very ashamed. The best part, however, is when whomever you ask for help is broke, too, which leaves you embarrassed and ashamed and just as short as you'd been before you asked.

Being broke means never getting a good night's sleep. It means being afraid to close your eyes because of what you'll see waiting for you there in the darkness. If the TV gets reception, you become well-versed in the late-night programming. Being broke turns your stomach into a constant reminder of your situation, because it's a ball of angst and dread right there in the middle of you. You are never hungry when your stomach talks to you about finances, which is good because you barely have enough for a slice at the local pizza shop. It's just you and your fears in the twitching light of the television in the middle of the night because they're going to cut off the electricity and you're out of change and there are no jobs and you just can't sleep.

Being broke makes it hard to look your spouse or your parents or your children or your friends in the eye because you don't have any answers. We get look-on-the-bright-side and things-will-turn-up fed to us with mother's milk, but none of that alleviates the weight on the back of your neck that pushes your head down and robs you of sleep.

Being broke these days, however, means you're not alone. There's always a line at the Coinstar now, always a line at the counter of the music store where they buy used CDs and DVDs for pennies on the dollar. The gas station with the cheapest regular unleaded is always busy, and the check-cashing joint where you can pay overdue utility bills is filled with half the people from your neighborhood. There are always familiar faces at the unemployment office, and everyone knows exactly what's going on with you and everybody else.

Being broke is a familiar experience for most of us now. People are going broke, households are going broke, towns, cities, counties, states, nations, hemispheres are going broke, and why? Because several very old, very bad ideas are going broke, and taking the lot of us along for the ride down the chute. Being broke is among the most solitary and shattering of experiences; in a crowd of broke people, everyone always feels alone.

You're not alone.