The value of a nickel

I make a lot of jokes about people.  I will make fun of how they act, how they look, and what kind of crap they do.  But underneath it all, I take a great deal of sympathy on people.  After all, not everyone has all that I have, or can they do all that I can do.  Napoleon Hill said in his book “Think and Grow Rich”, that the number one reason for failure in life is Unfavorable Hereditary Background.  To quote it directly, “There is little, if anything, which can be done for people who are born with a deficiency in brain power”.   

I write this because I am surrounded by people who are suffering.  Suffering in poverty, with medical conditions, and just other crap that life has dealt them.   I myself suffer some of these things, and I need to remind myself this from time to time. 

The adage “One man’s garbage is another man’s Treasure” never seems so true then when I see someone digging through the trash for pop cans.  I see this a lot now that I am back in Oregon.  Washington didn’t do this .05 refund for returning the can to the store, so it wasn’t a big deal.  But here in Salem, the land that I would like to leave and forget, it is very common.  In fact, it is so common that I have started to remind people during the move-in process that they cannot climb in the compactor. 

But today, I came to the compactor and one of my residents was inside of it.  He had been there for a while, and was breaking open trash bags.  He was pretty dirty, and red in the face from the cold.  And for all his trouble, he had about 15 cans sitting on the ground. 

I told him he couldn’t do that, and he gave me an excuse about it being Christmas and he needed money for his kids.  The sad part, I know he isn’t completely lying.  I know there story, and I cannot share that here.  I started to clean up around the compactor, and he gathered his stuff to leave.  As he was leaving I noticed that he picked up about 10 cigarettes that he had pulled out of the trash, all over half smoked.  I know he doesn't smoke.  He pulled them out for his wife. 

I don’t have much money right now.  I am so broke right now that I am looking at ways to cut expense for the next few months.  But, I can be eternally great full that I have not been reduced to picking trash from the garbage.  I pity the people that find that as a reasonable source of extra money, and I wish that our society took better care of people.  The treatment of the mentally ill and the disabled is often reprehensible.  I will call that a fact, not just my opinion.     

To make things worse, I work and live in a community that is well below the poverty level.  Over half of the people here are on Government housing.  I would predict that 90% are receiving assistance of some sort.  Some of the people here chose their life style, most do not. 

I think living and working here is like visiting a foreign country.  It is easy to think that these people and this situation do not exist.  Or, that it isn’t as bad as people say.  Try telling that to the person who is has been reduced to digging through the trash.  Tell that to the people that cannot even get a job at fast food.  I suppose they would have trouble getting a food handlers card, but that again… Is it there fault there parent breed.