Do not read this post.
I promise, it won’t make a difference in your life except waste your time.
Fine.
If you don’t like it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Seriously, don’t read this. It’s not worth it. Click somewhere else. Please.
—-
Post title: The Death of Hope, or The New Society.
I wish it were just a weird title to a murder mystery, but it’s not.
It’s tough to read GQ’s December issue and try to figure out what the eff happened to the first decade of the 21st century. It’s tough to be here, now. Walking my neighborhood earlier today, trying to figure out why what used to be a 50-cent bag of Doritos now costs 99 cents.
Why what used to be a 25-cent bag of Cheese Doodles now costs 50 cents.
Why I feel like I had more money in my pocket as a teenager than I do as an adult.
I’m not trying to be negative, or dismissive. I’m just trying to figure out why I find myself raiding my effing piggy bank more times than I’d like to admit. My piggy bank ought to have a “Police Line – Do Not Cross” tape around it, because it’s been broken into and violated so many times.
To my credit, however, I raid some, and I deposit the rest in savings. Even today, I took the last of the silver coins, and wrapped the rest: a buck in pennies.
This is not going to be a glamorous blog post, one which makes me feel like I’m a good writer or anything.
I’m just looking for some direction.
I call this The New Society because we took a step backward.
I’m not trying to overstate the obvious, the unemployment rate, the job situation, the state of the economy.
I’m saying that this is changing me.
I had no idea adulthood looked like this.
If I did, I would have done things differently.
Today is the first time in a long time that I considered buying just-add-water pancake mix as a serious foodstuff. Two boxes for $5. A 32-oz jar of honey for $5. That, right there, is a seriously good breakfast. Granted, it might give you a coronary, but it’ll stick to your ribs long before it sticks to your heart valves.
The things that used to be my primary foodstuffs — junk food, really — has become unrealistically expensive. Like, a packet of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups is 85 cents.
Really? That’s fucking insane. When I was in high school, it was 50 cents. And even though I was in high school 15 years ago (where did the fucking time go??), it was 50 cents. And it should not be 85 cents.
So, I’ve got to re-evaluate. Maybe it’s about going back to the days of fruit punch and lemon juice and sugar, I don’t know.
If what we’re truly witnessing is the death of the middle class, the slow, dramatic, agonizing death of the masses, then I’m just trying to figure out what to do to make the money last.
I’m thinking that Christmas gifting is going to have to come to a halt. Not that I was all that into gifting, but really, there’s no chance of significant gifting anymore. Also, dinners out are done. Snack foods? Scratch that.
What used to be our way of life is now history. We’re living the poverty line. Slumdog Millionaire will have nothing on us. ;)
I knew the shit had hit the fan when I discovered there were no eggs in the fridge.
We never run out of eggs where I live. Never.
So running out of eggs was the equivalent of an intruder coming into my home and violating me. This whole economy thing was for the birds, for people who had something to lose, for ambitious, hard-working people, not for slackers who really just try to have fun and live life.
After all, we didn’t kill anybody; we’re not trying to harsh anyone’s buzz. Why is this happening to us?
My miniature life was being tampered with.
It’s not even as if I had a life worth tampering with. I have a miniature life.
A life that’s an imaginary replica of the real world. An income subsidized be the Bank of Mom and Dad. A front door that’s actually the door to my room. Access to cars, and I have absolutely no idea how the car note get paid.
A tiny, microscopic, miniature life. I have a kid, and even that feels like a weird dream I’m on the verge of waking up from. It feels like any minute, I’ll wake up and I’ll be back in junior high. Because really, who has a child and lives in their parents house, in their room they grew up in, works, and gets an allowance?? (And who the hell does it with such boldness and panache?)
I feel like I wouldn’t know how to survive as a responsible adult if my life depended on it. I was convinced that it does, but at this point in life, I have my doubts.
I always figured that this sucky little stupid stinking job I have is God’s will. Much the same way that it’s God’s will if the economy of a whole fucking country collapses. Much the same way that we wonder why bad things happen to good people, why my cousin with so much academic promise committed suicide a few years ago, why there are still very bad things that still happen.
It made things very, very, very, very simple and easy to deal with. My grades, my job, my life, all very small and neatly packaged. I didn’t pay a cent for college, because my parents paid for it. They wanted me to go to college, so I went. (Age 17.) And here I am, working this peanuts job at age 31, with my parents still paying for it. Go figure.
Why am I still in college? I dunno. Things’ll work out eventually, I guess.
Sometimes I really wish my parents hadn’t sent me to college, but instead just left me to mature and live life. Kicked me out to get a job at JC Penney’s or something and get a basement apartment somewhere where roaches get into everything porous.
At least I would have had a more realistic view of life. I wouldn’t have been so sheltered, so white bread, so painfully unprepared.
I remember having a conversation today with my mom in which I said that I really don’t think I’d be able to tell a youngster anything hopeful for the future. I was telling her how young people like me are saying these days that if we would have known about the major financial collapse of our country back when we were kids, we would have played and had our fun back then, and not studied anywhere as hard as we did.
I remember telling her that nowadays, when I see little kids playing around when they should be focusing, I think to myself, “Leave them be. Let them enjoy their youth. They’ll have their entire adult lives to toil and drudge.”
Her answer was that it’s the principle of the thing, to get them ready for when things turn around, because at least if things get better, they’ll be prepared to take advantage of it.
Her answer was that the problem is that I don’t see an end in sight, and so therefore I limit my aspiration.
I didn’t respond, mostly because I didn’t want to get her emotional. (She tends to get emotional when we disagree about something significant.) But I really don’t see a point to continuing where there is no way forward.
I didn’t really come from a subsistence generation. But I have a feeling that most people are going to be homeless.
I remember telling my mom that I cannot in good conscience tell a youngster that he can be anything he wants to be when he grows up — after all, that field may not be hiring when he grows up. They just might be laying people off. Heck — it’s happened to me. I wanted to be a video game tester/producer. Didn’t work out. Everyone got laid off, and the company folded. And that was when I was 21.
I just wish that Mom wasn’t so excessively optimistic; I wish she’d just acknowledge my acute fear. But, whatever. This is the Great Depression, in more ways than one. The only difference is that we’ve got cable and Internet access. All the economists in the world can’t fix this. Like Davy Crockett at the Alamo, we make merry tonight, for we know tomorrow will come the slaughter.