I’ve been working on my taxes 😭 and reflecting a little on just how grateful I am to be in this spot in life as I write out my check. 😂😂❤️❤️
We were so poor growing up that tax time was bonus time for us. It was confusing for me as a kid too because everyone would complain about this time of year ...while my mom would be stalking and harassing the mail man every day for her tax refund check. Finally, when he did have her check , he would personally deliver it to her trailer instead of the mail box!
We were so poor growing up that when everyone would be making their grocery shopping lists for Saturday morning...my mom was figuring out how she would scam going to more than one food bank line to see how much cheese we could get. Have you ever seen food bank cheese? No one needs that much cheese!
We were so poor growing up that when she did get her tax check…I’d hear my name on the classroom intercom that my mom was there to pick me up for my “doctors appointment” and instead , she’d take me to K-Mart on delridge way and I got to pile the cart as high as I could with toys. There’d be no layaway on this day. Forget about December 25th, this was the real Christmas time.
We were so poor growing up that for a little while during this tax season time, we were high rollers and ate like royalty at the Royal Fork - an all you can eat buffet. She would load her big purse with plastic bags...and she would make me repeatedly go to the roast beef and turkey line. By the time we walked out of there, she would damn near have a whole turkey in her purse!
We were so poor growing up that we had no idea what was going on in Iran or Iraq back in the 80s, but I was safe because it was far away. I didn’t know what a “social issue” meant, and I had no idea that maybe we were the people that other people complained about having to fund. The only thing I knew about homosexuality was that if someone was a gay man that he was likely to have this new disease called aids which sounded scary.
We were so poor growing up that we didn't know what a stock market was or how it worked. My mother never had a checking account or investments. She paid her bills with money orders that she got from the drug store. And pay day meant for us that my mother cashed her entire check...laid out all the money on the table...and I was allowed to go to double session roller skating that night.
In a way, life was simpler. We weren’t ignorant, but we just weren’t privileged enough to worry about anything else other than surviving. So I won’t cry too much about having to pay my taxes this year…maybe I’ll even take myself out to an all-you-can-eat-buffet for old time sake(minus the plastic bags in my purse) to celebrate another year of tax season. 😂
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