Money

I hate it. It's a tool used by those who have it to keep those who don't down. It divides the masses, the social classes. It's the root of evil, divides family and friends, rules the world.

That being said, it's necessary in this world. Fair work expects fair pay in return. However, fair pay is hard to come by, so you accept what you're making and learn to budget. You figure out how to feed a family of four on $30 a month. You learn to juggle bills, to live without your phone for a few days a month because you're late paying on it and it gets shut off. You figure out that freezerburned vanilla ice cream actually tastes pretty decent in a hot cup of coffee, if you run out of sugar and powdered generic creamer. You scrimp and you juggle and you balance, dependent on getting the money for your work on time. If it doesn't come in, it throws off the whole precarious balance and it all comes crashing down.

 What's the value of a dollar? I could take it and buy Matthew and Jonah each an apple and a banana at Meijer's from the Healthy Snacks stand. I could get a cold Faygo Orange. I could slide it into the donation jar at Tom and Dick's Convenience Store for whatever local cause they're fundraising for this week. I could get an order of fries from Wendy's. I could buy a Bug Juice or a piece of string cheese for the kids.

Five dollars gets me an eighth of a tank of gas, enough for Jeremy to get back and forth to work for two days. Six dollars for a pack of smokes. Eleven dollars and fifty cents buys the ingredients for cheesy baked potato soup and a loaf of bread, which feeds us for three or four days. Twenty bucks for jeans. Five bucks for makeup to hide the fact that I've been up late with the kids before I go submit the latest round of applications. A dollar and twenty-nine cents to get a large coffee from the gas station to help keep me going. Ten dollars in wasted gas between Thursday and yesterday, going down to the shop to pick up my pay, only to see that it's closed and locked, then going over to the owner's house, seeing his car parked, and knocking on his door, only for it to go unanswered.

Five hundred fifty dollars for the week of twelve to fourteen hour long days I put in helping to move the store from its old location to the new one. Subtract $250 for the laptop computer I took in trade, and $90 in merchandise for Christmas presents, and for a pair of shoes for me since my old ones had holes in them.

So what's left owed to me? $260.

$260 could buy Matthew his string cheese and bananas, could turn my phone back on, could renew the tags on my van. It could pay off a couple of the parking tickets accumulated this winter when we literally had no money to feed the meter. It could pay for Jeremy and I to have dinner at a fast food restaurant for my birthday and our anniversary. It could get Jeremy the new shoes he needs desperately. It could buy food and litter for his cats. It could get all sorts of treats for the kids.

$260 for time lost with my children, for days spent at the store by myself, waiting to see if anyone showed up to help, moving heavy boxes and crates and pouring my heart and soul into a venture that was never mine at all, something I believed in and wanted to succeed, only to find out that I was being laid off for lack of business, due to the way this tourist town operates. $260 could buy a few bottles of Tylenol for my aching back, that's messed up from doing manual labor for the whole of my working career. $260 would pay for me to go to the doctor and get my migraine prescriptions renewed. It would cover the cost of gas for us to go downstate if need be for Jonah's upcoming surgery. $260 may sound like a drop in the bucket, but when you're living in that shadowland of paycheck to paycheck, it's a windfall.

If you're reading this, and you're the one responsible, I hope you feel about as big as an ant. It takes a big person to keep a family hanging, waiting for money that will probably never come. You can't tell me you're just as broke as we are - you're a single person, you've got a fairly new vehicle, you're keeping gas in it so you can drive around and do what you need to. You can't sit there and claim friendship with your mouth and not mean it with your heart - it doesn't work that way. And if you truly felt it in your heart, things wouldn't have gotten to this point. You come over here. You look me in the eyes, look my man and my kids in the eyes, and explain to them why you drop off the face of the earth on payday.