My dad had to pay out $800 today to get the brakes on his car fixed; geez man, $800. After he tells me what the damage is – he then questions whether or not I'm saving up money to fix my own car when it starts to break. Pssh, yeah, I barely have enough money to make it to the next paycheck. I'm paying my bills at least. That'll keep me above water, but damn, what happens when everything starts to break? Everything we buy is an investment because it breaks. I've been lucky to purchase some miraculously reliable products, but they'll break soon enough just like everything else has. You don't just buy a car for twenty grand and think of it as an investment of twenty grand. You buy a car for twenty grand and think of it as an investment of twenty grand, and include over the years the cost of fixing, and maintaining the car. My folks have had this GE microwave for, I shit you not, over twenty years, and the damn thing still works like it did on day one. Of course, it looks old, but it still kicks. If everything I purchase, or my family purchases, tested time like this damn microwave – my family would be sittin' a little bit prettier because of it.
It's tough, man. I have no idea what the world expects from us; all of us. We're good people. We work hard to enjoy what little we have only to notice that what little we have lessens every time the economic leech sinks its teeth in. Money issues have become the sole factor for arguments in my family. My family is a humble group of people who all make an honest living. We enjoy each other's company, and have had the greatest of times together, though these moments are short lived once money enters the picture. The frustrations of money have turned my father into a machine so consumed in getting the bills paid, that sitting down three nights a week to balance his check book has become a hobby.
I remember when I didn't have to care about money; I was a child, of course. Life had such a completely different meaning then. I felt free. I wasn't required to understand why my folks couldn't by me toys. I was only required to tear up because, I guess, I felt a little less loved when they couldn't afford them. What a pathetic psychosis. I wish I could have understood, as a child, the things I understand now. It would have been easier to know I should appreciate what I do have, because many people in the world have much less, and enjoy their lives just fine. Now that I'm grown up (pssh), and have to care about money – I do not feel free anymore. I feel chained to everything I spend money on – no matter how big, how small, how important, or how insignificant it is. I don't think my family was prepared for this world when we were young. Decisions were made, carrying us into alternate time lines that branched from the initial point the decisions were made, where other possible decisions went in all sorts of directions, but these souls found this one, and the others…well, who knows. Our world is different.
-Frank
