Anonymous wrote:We were homeless 3 times. I can remember sleeping in our car in my grandmothers driveway. I still have fears of being homeless. Honestly my worst experience was from church. I rode the church bus every Sunday and Wednesday. One Sunday when I was 9 I was pulled aside and told I couldn't come back to church unless I wore a dress. I remember crying because Ive never owned a dress and just knew we couldn't afford one. The next Wednesday was supposed to be a special event with a magician and ice cream party for awanas. I sat on my porch and the bus never came. I cried and sat there for hours thinking about that ice cream party To this day I refuse to ever go to another church. Im crying just thinking about the cruelty that was shown toward me as a child.

I'm sorry PP.

I did not see a doctor or dentist between 14 and 17, except for two ER visits. My first month of college, my RA sent me to Student Health where I was referred out to 4 specialists to fix stuff that I thought was normal, but was related to poverty and child neglect.

I had malnutrition off and on. This was the cause of one ER visit. The dr thought I had an eating disorder.

My mom only told me as an adult that we qualified for FARMs if she divorced my dad.

There was never enough to eat and much of it was low nutritional quality. We ate a lot of bean soup. If it scorched, we still ate it. To this day, I hate to throw out food. My fiancé also grew up poor and we repurpose almost every single scrap.

We ate at soup kitchens when possible and got boxes from food pantries. In the summer and fall, you got flats of veggies and fruits that were past their prime. I learned how to can from my grandmothers so that we didn't have to gorge on pears for 3 days or let it all rot.

My schools required uniforms. I had one set. I washed things out by hand everyday after school so they wouldn't 't stink or be visibly soiled and then hung them to dry. They never fully dried so I started out each day in damp clothes.

My feet grew a lot between 8 and 14. Twice my parents scraped together enough to buy new shoes only to discover I'd been wearing shoes two sizes too small for months. My feet stopped growing at 14. All of HS, I had the same two pairs of shoes: tennis for PE and outside of school; non-tennis that I wore to regular classes and church.

I usually got non school clothes from the thrift store or from nice people at church. They seldom seemed to have DDs my size so I often wore styles meant for adults not teens. H&M and other reasonably affordable stores didn't exist --at least where we lived. There was a $5.99 clothing store a few years later. Buying a new outfit at Kmart for Christmas or my birthday was a big deal. I remember it happening maybe 5 times. My great-aunts would drive us and then treat us to dinner at Friendly's. When they dropped us off, they always had secretly purchased some additional treat for us. They would force my mom to take $20 for groceries, and remind her that the extended family still owned rental property in a rural area in VA. I used to fantasize about that farm and having chucked that would give fresh eggs every day. We ate cheap donated powdered eggs. My mom wouldn't move because my brother had severe ADHD and learning disabilities. She felt he couldn't get a decent education in a tiny rural VA district.

My coat was lined with an old quilt that my mother took apart. I used to fold it in a special way so no one saw. I had the same coat for MS and HS because my brother grew faster and kept losing his things. The pockets had been mended so many times that eventually my mom replaced them altogether. The bottom of my cheap bookbag was held together with duct tape to keep books from falling out.

No heat/ no power was a regular thing. For a while, we had no running water because a pipe burst and the slumlord refused to fix it. I often did my HW by the streetlight. If it was working. Drug dealers and muggers liked to break it.

I didn't have a bed from age 13 to 18. My bed broke. We put the mattress on the floor. Which was fun with the mice and roaches. Eventually, the cheap foam mattress was so beat down that I started stuffing it with my family's old clothing.

There's more, but these were the consistent everyday challenges.

When I left for college, I had a sleeping bag, but I got to sleep in a real bed. I got to eat 3 meals a day and gained 22 lbs. A rich girl who befriended me gave me her castoff clothes when she realized that I really only had a few garments.

I'm not a perfect mom, but I've kept the lights and heat on. My kids have the proper clothing and food. They go to the doctor and dentist.

I grew up poor. My mom a single mom (divorced) 3 kids, she had no work experience or education, so she always got low paying jobs.

We qualified for free breakfast and lunch
Had the church deliver us food weekly
The school nurse kept records of me and my sisters weekly
In the winter (NJ) we couldn't afford oil, so we had to wear winter closes all the time, even to bed.
Because my mom worked low end jobs, she had crazy hours. My siblings and I were alone a lot. By 5 I could cook pancakes, if we had them.
My sister and I thought we were making dough by mixing water and flour. We ate that a lot.
I would eat the macaroni art and paper from school because I was always hungry
We got most of our clothes from good will or the church
By 8 I was in foster care until I about 11 when they found my dad

I never owned a single children's book nor did anyone ever read to me.

We were homeless 3 times. I can remember sleeping in our car in my grandmothers driveway. I still have fears of being homeless. Honestly my worst experience was from church. I rode the church bus every Sunday and Wednesday. One Sunday when I was 9 I was pulled aside and told I couldn't come back to church unless I wore a dress. I remember crying because Ive never owned a dress and just knew we couldn't afford one. The next Wednesday was supposed to be a special event with a magician and ice cream party for awanas. I sat on my porch and the bus never came. I cried and sat there for hours thinking about that ice cream party To this day I refuse to ever go to another church. Im crying just thinking about the cruelty that was shown toward me as a child.

I grew up farm poor like most in my community which had been cash poor for generations. It wasn't the abject poverty many on this thread suffered. But it's a different experience (and mentality) than what is typical on DCUM. Food wasn't usually an issue and most people did not have AC (I actually didn't live in a place with it until I was in my mid 20s and living in DC). It wasn't unusual for people to have unheated bedrooms and most kids I knew shared bedrooms. Ours were unheated and there were 3 of us to a bedroom. Everyone worked from an early age - and a lot of it was hard work. Lots of hand me downs and doing without, taking food to a neighbor who was struggling.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here is that when people did have birthday parties, gifts were NEVER opened at the party. To do so might embarrass someone who couldn't afford to bring a gift or might invite comparison between gifts. You invited someone to your party because you wanted their company. You wouldn't want them to decline because they couldn't afford a present nor would you want them to have to choose between attending or spending money they didn't have.

I've posted a few times on the 'why don't you open presents at the party?' threads. I'm appalled at at the obliviousness of some of the posters - people who think they know who's poor because they volunteer at the school and know who gets a FARM.

God bless you all! These stories are breaking my heart.

I was not poor per say but grew up in a different country where we did not have the same luxuries. I think it was more bad economy vs family being poor.

- we did not have AC in home or in car. Summers would get so hot that we would wake up at night to take a cold shower
- we could only afford one pair of tennis shoes a year (they were just really expensive compared to people's salaries) and we would wash/wipe them every day. Same for jeans
- sometimes there would be a shortage of bread/milk so we would have to wake up early to get in line at the store and they would limit one or 2 per customer.
- I didn't use a computer or even know what a DVD player was until I came here at 13 years old

Add me to the list of people that qualified for the free lunch, but never took it because people would know. Hopefully by now they figured out something other than tokens, so its a private matter.

I am also another one that donates a lot to kids christmas stuff, because I remember what it was like not having one, and what a horrible feeling that was. This year I dropped off 15 bicycles to a local toys for tots fundraiser. Not the $45 Wal Mart cheapie, but real bikes. Every kid should have a bike.

Anonymous wrote:I did not grow up poor but my father did. He grew up poor, abused, and neglected. He saved himself by volunteering for the military as soon as they let him; I think he was just 17. After he served, he went to college on the GI Bill and got the hell out of dodge.

The PP who finds it hard to say no to her DC reminded me of one of my favorite stories about my dad:

He never told people about his past. In fact, my sibling and I knew very little about his childhood while growing up. He was stern and quiet. But he would break character at Christmas and was well-known for consistently buying the biggest and most expensive items on the local "Angel Tree" each year. He'd buy children Nintendo systems, walkmans, bikes, etc... He'd wrap it up himself and deliver the goodies to the tree with glee.

Apparently, when he was 6, he was asked at church make out a list for "Santa." His mother took the paper and wrote out that he wanted mittens and a coat. He was angry and threw a fit. Santa, after all, was supposed to bring you toys and that's what he wanted. At the church Christmas celebration that year, he got his coat and mittens, along with a giant robot toy that he had coveted for some time. He said he never felt better in his life than at that moment and he would never let a kid's Christmas wish go unfulfilled, if he could help it.

Yup. Growing up poor meant Christmas presents meant things like new socks. Or one year I got one can of tennis balls. My tennis racket was made of wood and belonged to my grandmother.

I look back and realize that a lot of routines were embedded at an early age to the point that I don't remember anyone teaching them to me.

-Whenever it was going to rain, I'd unplug the TV and place tarps over the TV, floor, and bed. Then, I'd put all of the buckets in the right spots.
-Before bed, I'd heat up water on the hotplate and pour it into old soda bottles, and then place them in the bed with me to keep warm.
-I knew not to throw away any straws and to keep all containers (styrofoam cups, plates, discarded yogurt cups, etc) and plastic silverware because we didn't have any at home.
-I never questioned why we went through other people's trash. It was just something we did on our evening walks. I looked forward to it, because sometimes I'd find toys or electronics that they would let me take apart and try to fix at home.
-People kept giving us stuff. I never questioned why someone kept giving me coats, clothes, food, and books. I just thought people were really nice.

It wasn't until middle school that I realized other people didn't typically live like this and I became ashamed.

The story the PP above shared about "Nativity" reminded me of one of my friends (who I am still close with today, 25 years later).

This was also in the Midwest, in the 90s (I'm 35). My friend was the oldest of 6 children and the only girl. Her father was a Lutheran minister. Her mother had some kind of disability that prevented her from working or even really doing much around the house, so when I met my friend Sarah, at age 10, she was already the caregiver for the other children.

They lived across the street from our school, in a 3 bedroom house. They didn't have a car. The closest grocery store was about a mile and a half away, up a pretty steep hill. They were always dirty. Their clothing was clearly washed by hand, not always properly dried. The younger kids' clothing was well worn due to being handed down so many times. Sarah didn't have new clothes, ever. Her father got some kind of stipend from the church, but his main compensation was the house.

When we were in 4th grade, after I'd know her for maybe 6 months, the house caught on fire and burned to the ground. The family was safe, but they lost everything. The church was not able to immediately finance the building of a new home and wasn't even able to clear away the rubble. The family stayed in a motel for a couple of days, and then they stayed in the community center at the church for a while until the church could sort out a place for them to live, which ended up being someone's uncle's trailer on the far side of town.

A couple years later, my family moved, and Sarah's family also moved to another small Midwest town. She got pregnant when she was 14 (I blame her religious parents' refusal to provide any sex ed whatsoever and that sort of thing not being taught in our schools). She has 4 children and has been married three times (twice divorced). She is brilliant, though, and really insightful and thoughtful about poverty.

15:36, my dad is an orphan and he does that - he also buys every neighborhood kid a huge candy bar at Halloween. Your story made me tear up.

^ God Bless your father, PP. And bless that soul who gave him the robot toy all those years ago. It's Wonderful how one act of kindness rippled through the lives of other children in future generations, which the person who bought the robot probably never even considered. Thank you for sharing your story.

I did not grow up poor but my father did. He grew up poor, abused, and neglected. He saved himself by volunteering for the military as soon as they let him; I think he was just 17. After he served, he went to college on the GI Bill and got the hell out of dodge.

The PP who finds it hard to say no to her DC reminded me of one of my favorite stories about my dad:

He never told people about his past. In fact, my sibling and I knew very little about his childhood while growing up. He was stern and quiet. But he would break character at Christmas and was well-known for consistently buying the biggest and most expensive items on the local "Angel Tree" each year. He'd buy children Nintendo systems, walkmans, bikes, etc... He'd wrap it up himself and deliver the goodies to the tree with glee.

Apparently, when he was 6, he was asked at church make out a list for "Santa." His mother took the paper and wrote out that he wanted mittens and a coat. He was angry and threw a fit. Santa, after all, was supposed to bring you toys and that's what he wanted. At the church Christmas celebration that year, he got his coat and mittens, along with a giant robot toy that he had coveted for some time. He said he never felt better in his life than at that moment and he would never let a kid's Christmas wish go unfulfilled, if he could help it.