#Proudtobepoor

What's poor? Is it when you can't feed yourself any more? Because if that's the case, then I'm not poor. Is it when you're at zero monies? Because then I'm more or less poor.

I think poor is when you know how to do things.

I grew up poor. Everyone can say they grew up poor, but I think what everyone counts as poor is different.

In my case, I consider growing up poor is when you spent your summers picking potato bugs off of plants. When you tilled the garden, and weeded the crops, and trips to the big city were rare and amazing. I consider poor as being envious of the people who had not-gravel roads. These people have concrete going up all the way to the ROAD?!? How cool is that? Imagine how smooth it would be to bike on.

I think I grew up poor because my grandma didn't have plumbing for a while. My mom seemed to make a special note out of taking us up there, so that we would learn how she grew up. I always remembered that.
I remember bathing in a big metal bucket in the yard.

I grew up learning how to do stuff.

Want to make a thing do another thing? Well, how could I do that? I've got sticks, and pieces of wood, and nails, and string, and twine. I didn't like the twine much... too twisty, and it coiled up all annoyingly.

I learned how to use tools to do things. Is there something I can imagine? Well, then there's probably a way to make it. Come up with a way to cobble together some random assortment of pieces of things, and something's bound to happen. And if not, scrap it and start over. Or run out of materials. Or get bored and go do something else. Or follow the cat into the forest.

That was pretty fun. The cat would go wandering off into the forest, and I'd go climbing after her, ducking under the branches and around the trees. When she looked at something in the distance, I'd look between her ears from behind, and try to see what she spotted.

I grew up pushing down trees. I liked to call it tree-pushing. You go into a forest, and you find those really big old dead stumps, and you push 'em over! It was great fun. Sometimes you'd have to rock 'em back and forth, until they splintered and cracked. Sometimes they wouldn't budge an inch. Sometimes, they'd crack *just* a little bit, to make you think that maybe you could 'get this one'.

And you'd spend 20 minutes or whatever shoving this tree over and over again, hearing just a few more cracks every time you threw your body against it. Eventually, either the tree fell down, or you'd give up.
I climbed a lot of trees too. It was really fun when you could find a Poplar that was just the right size so that you could climb up a good distance, and then it would bend over and drop you back onto the ground again. I always meant to remember to bring something with me, so I could try launching it with a tree. Never got around to that one :/
I grew up poor, and I learned how to do anything. Is there something that needs to be done? Well, all we have is what we have, so let's find a way to do it. That's all there is to it.

Y'got whatcha got. That's what I consider poor.

That said, I'm sick of it. I'm in my mid-30's, I've been in the city for ages, and in all reality everything is boring as hell and expensive as hell.

Can someone make me not-poor? There's a puzzler for ya... make a transgender girl not poor.

I'm at zero monies, and I'm willing to do stuff. Whatcha got?

And if it's 'keep doing the same thing', I've tried that. The tree never fell over