An important piece of how well-off you are, which measuring income isn’t really going to catch, is how much shock absorption your community has built in.
Some people don’t have an in-person community, of course, and so the shock-absorption available to them is just whatever is in their own savings account and how much credit they have access to and maybe the knowledge that in the worst case they could move across the country and sleep on a friends’ couch for a few weeks but not longer because the friends’ landlord is strict about subtenants.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, upper-class communities have tons of shock absorption – if your home burns down, you probably have a friend who has a vacation home or an in-laws suite or a guest room where you can stay, if you lose your job it was the kind of job for which you get unemployment and you know someone who can get you an interview for another one, if you have a medical crisis you have lots of friends who can bring food and help out, and they all work jobs that let them take off on short notice in the middle of the day.
I’ve been helping a friend recover from surgery this week, and I’ve been thinking about this a ton. I could work from home for three days to be with her; her girlfriend had a spare bed where she could sleep for two because she was supposed to be near the surgery center and her house was an hour away; her girlfriend’s boyfriend could come over to help when girlfriend had to go to work; when her doctor’s appointment was changed to a time when I couldn’t drive her, another friend could take three hours off to do it. That’s a community with shock absorption.
It’s a class thing, but it’s not just a class thing. Doing this sort of thing is one of the things religions do. When I describe what I value about my community, my religious friends tend to go “oh, so, like what my church does”. A poor community where a dozen people from church will bring meals and support after surgery or after a loss or during cancer treatment has vastly more shock absorption than a same-income community where people have no way to coordinate that (and I think the decline of religion has been particularly costly in poor communities for exactly this reason).
And lots of money can’t fully substitute for a community, because lots of disasters (like medical emergencies) are of the kind that make it hard to advocate for yourself and independently arrange all the things you’re going to need.
I don’t know how you increase shock absorption. Lowering the cost of housing does part of it; a spare bedroom is a particularly critical kind of shock absorption that protects lots of people from homelessness. More leisure time increases shock absorption, and cutting the expected work week has been at least partially successful some places. My impression is that Social Security dramatically increased shock absorption, by giving elderly people (who often end up needing community support to remain independent or survive) more financial resources; it’s much easier for poor families to take someone in if they will get regular money towards housing and expenses. UBI would do it too, of course.
It’s not just personal savings accounts for people without in-person communities. If something terrible happened to me, my friends could send me money through PayPal or checks in the mail and vice versa.
when i was recovering from surgery, seebs was able to take a big chunk of time off to be with me, because their employer thought ‘spouse recovering from surgery’ was a good reason to take time off, and they’re on salary.
people who’ve only worked one or the other don’t seem to understand the vast difference between wage and salary.
i kept thinking back to all my hourly jobs where i would’ve gotten fired for taking the time off, but even if my kindly employer had held my job for me – nearly impossible in service jobs – i would’ve been making no money while i wasn’t working. and that can be a blow your finances never recover from.
So if you want a desperate exploitable workforce pool, it’s to your advantage to disrupt, overburden, or outright destroy all forms of social shock absorption. This explains so much.
Yeah, I do get pretty worked up sometimes. I am well aware of this.
But, the number of people who would suggest that you just need to chill, or go “You just said a lot of those things happened in the ‘80s, so why would you even remember or care now?! Get over it already, weirdo!” Unfortunately good illustration of some of the bigger problems that keep this shit rolling. And rolling, and… 😬
Also one of those cases where those were just some examples from personal experience, and what I was really talking about was some bigger patterns. Easier to dismiss that kind of thing if you have some investment in not looking at those patterns.
Yeah, I do get pretty worked up sometimes. I am well aware of this.
But, the number of people who would suggest that you just need to chill, or go “You just said a lot of those things happened in the ‘80s, so why would you even remember or care now?! Get over it already, weirdo!” Unfortunately good illustration of some of the bigger problems that keep this shit rolling. And rolling, and… 😬
Being too white and too black at the same damn time
Being generally socially inept because I was homeschooled until 6th grade…
Being an antisocial bookworm who couldn’t pick up on social cues and interrupted conversations with total strangers.
Being socially innept because I was homeschooled until 8th grade and also having wild, unmanageable hair.
Being too dang pale and also very fat. (I’m not fat no more)
Bein’ a massive weeb and WAY too excitable.
Also it’s gonna make me sound like your typical “they’re just jealous” brat, but I was also bullied for holding some of the highest grades in the class.
For not fitting in because I had different interests, I liked reading, and I was friends with the teachers.
Being too poor to afford anything but ratty jeans and tshirts, and I ate weird crappy lunches. Sometimes I hid in the locker room because I had no food. Being a geek girl in the 80s; they made fun of me for reading a lot and liking Star Wars and comics. Mocked by teachers and students for trying to get a girl’s soccer team started at school. I practiced with the boy’s team but wasn’t allowed to compete in matches.
(I love 80s pop culture and nostalgia, but it really wasn’t the nicest time to grow up. People were cruel about dumb stuff. Cheerleaders and jocks really were considered supercool and they really were not very nice).
Mostly reblogging because my experience of growing up in the ‘80s really sucked too, in some similar ways.
The real answer there was being stuck in a school system with a super-toxic social environment. (Confirmed by pretty much all of it stopping when I was old enough to drive myself and transferred to a neighboring county out for self-preservation. I kept waiting for the torture to start up again, but it never did.)
But, I was nerdy and, gee surprise, autistic with some LDs that got ignored because I was “smart”–and also inexplicably stupid in specialized ways. I apparently stayed at 99% percentile on height and weight, until HS when more kids started catching up. My family was working poor and not White enough. Put a lot of effort into dressing “right” for a while and developed an ED, but that didn’t even slow any of the appearance-as-an-excuse stuff down. Shifting goalposts all over the place, with literally no way to win. Later on I was too punk, and at least that was actually fun. I also ended up in the psych system in middle school (gee wonder why), so that was of course low-hanging fruit after that.
From the feedback, I just didn’t girl right in general, and was a uniquely repulsive human being. Some of that harassment (starting in elementary school) made it harder to come to terms with the fact that I am actually very queer and don’t have the same relationship with gender that a lot of people seem to.
Basically, I’m so sorry and also angry again looking over this post, with all the reminders of the sheer number and variety of excuses people will concoct to justify treating children like shit. With other kids taking their cues from the adults around them. Nobody deserves to get treated like that. No matter how fucking weird they may or may not be in reality. Much less literal children.
i was thinking about the weirdest phone calls i got when i still worked at the public library and i remembered this one phone call. it was probably less than 20 seconds long, but it still makes me laugh.
anyways, this woman called and without even saying hello after i said the usual “public library, how can i help you?” spiel, she said, “i have a very important question: when you shelve books, do you push them all to the front of the shelf or all the way back?”
it took me a second to process the question and then i answered that, at the library, we always shelve them so that they are even with the front edge so they’re easier to grab and see. she was obviously delighted by this answer and then, as if an afterthought, she asked, “okay, what about you? what do you do at home with your books?” i said i did the same thing. she hummed in obvious agreement and then just like that she said “thank you!” and hung up.
i never heard from her again. i hope she won whatever argument she was having.
for about a year, i worked at a call center for sprint. i have a similar kind of story.
a woman called, and said she had a question about the call history on her bill. “sure, let me just pull up your account-” and she cut me off going, “no, no, it’s not anything specific, it’s just. so, if you change the time on your phone, does that change the time on the bill?”
“uh… no? the time on the phone doesn’t matter, the call history is recorded by the towers.”
“ohhhh” she said in the saltiest voice i have ever heard “so even if you changed the timezone it wouldn’t change the time on the bill? to, say, the middle of the night?”
i stg yall i looked into the camera like i was on the office. “um… no? it would still be the local time of the tower. is there anything else i can help you with?”
to me, overly chipper: “nope! thank you! have a great day!” turning on someone as she hung up: “she says yoU’RE A LYING SACK OF-”
I’m trying to raise money to cover my elemental formula Neocate Splash until I can get into my doctor and either get an appointment to be fitted with a feeding tube or get my insurance to cover the neocate without me getting a tube.
I’ve dropped to 98 lbs and really need to get calories and nutrition into me
Thank you to everyone who has reblogged this so far! ❤
Thank you to everyone who is sharing this! We’ve raised $243 and almost enough for two cases of Neocate Splash! My appointment with my doctor is next Tuesday the 14th. So if I can get the two cases that should be able to hold me over until then! ❤
With your help I was able to purchase a case of Neocate which will be here on Thursday!! Thank you so so much!!
I ask you to please keep sharing and if you can’t donate just click the reblog button! I still will need another case to tide me over until insurance picks this up or I can get a tube put in!
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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