You get good at jumping through hoops when you’re poor and have to deal with all the different bureaucracies. And I don’t know how many times I’ve heard somebody in those bureaucracies tell me “You just have to jump through the hoops.”
I don’t play sports. I don’t like them. Period. And I especially don’t like playing games.
Jumping through hoops is a game that involves a number of players. The — “Red Players”, let’s call them – they’re on the “right” side. They have all the power. They spend half their days talking around and joking with each other, eating Colonel Sanders, filing their nails. See, the first hoop for the “Black Players” (aka “The Poor People”) is to see how long you can wait watching this without giving up and walking out. But if you do that, the game is over, for you. And it’s a part of the game that will happen over and over and over.
You see, these people really don’t want to help you. They don’t even like you. Some of them look down their noses at you because they are only about a step in life above you, and they’re determined to stay there. And I repeat “THEY ARE NOT THERE TO HELP YOU.”
I used to believe that lie. I thought highly of social agencies and all the network that was in place to help the poor. Until I found myself in them.
This isn’t the first time. It’s the third or fourth. And it just gets harder every time.
I am 53 years old. I am too tired to jump through hoops. My back hurts, my knees hurt from bending to your superiority, Oh Great and Wondrous Food Stamp Worker. All I want to do is punch your smarmy little face. But since I’ve never punched anyone in the face in my life, I suppose it isn’t in me to do so.
I jumped through the HEAP Hoop. Yet the gas and electric companies still insist I owe them over $600 – each. I jumped through the Food Stamp Hoop. Yet they neglected to tell me I hadn’t brought in sufficient proof; it was three weeks before I called, nearly a month I went without food stamps thanks to the fact that my “case manger” couldn’t just pick up the phone and call me (the woman I talked to when I did call looked at his notes and said he hadn’t done anything). What sort of madness is it when you have a so-called “case worker” who does nothing, and whom you cannot directly call?
Last week I ran out of cat food. It was inevitable, but between vet bills and no food stamps for awhile, it happened. I called a pantry north of where I live, and found out they did, indeed, have cat food.
Now this particular pantry isn’t technically for people in my zip code. There is a street – let’s call it “We’re Too Cool For You” Street, or WTCFY for short. It divides where I live, just a half-block south from WTCFYStreet, from the WTCFY neighborhood, which is north of WYTCFY Street. There is a huge difference between the residents on one side of the dividing line and residents on the other. The northern residents have houses; the southern have apartments. The northern residents have lawns and a park and fencing and gates; the southern have very little of any of these. The northern dwellers look down their noses at the rabble south of them; us rabble are snotty about the northern dwellers because they look down on us.
But they had a food pantry with cat food, and my food pantry in the southern section may have, but I had been there once and knew how utterly crappy it was. I walked into the northern food pantry and stood there agog. They had more bread than I see in some stores, They had toys and games. I couldn’t see all the food in the back, but I’m sure it was good and plentiful, unlike the gross canned stuff we get. I bet they even had dairy. I looked at the fliers posted around, about various programs, and thought “They are so much better than my pantry.” I was excited. I decided I was going to ask if they could be my pantry, since I barely live outside the line.
After waiting awhile, two women said “Oh, cat food. We can do that.” And they brought out ten cans of cat food. As they did, I asked if I could be connected with their pantry instead of mine.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I was thinking they would say “I’m sorry, but no.” Pleasantly. Nicely.
What I got reminded me of my mother’s old psychological head games: take my words, twist them until they are no longer recognizable, make me cry and finally make me apologize for whatever it is I did (which I don’t even know).
The elder one rolled her eyes, which was the first bad sign. She signalled the younger one to come into an office. They asked me why I thought I wanted to use their services.
“Well, it looks like you have more services than mine does. . .”
“We are just a food pantry. We don’t have any services otherwise.”
(Then what were all those fliers about?)
“What is it you need from us.”
:Well, I can’t pay my phone bill.”
“We don’t help with phone bills. What else”
“Well, I’m in a mess with the phone bill, and the rent, and I won’t have busfare or money for my medications if I pay the rent.”
What followed was something like this:
You have hard decisions to make. (said at least three times, once in terms of keeping my cats!) You could end up in a homeless shelter. You should take to your landlord (He’s an asshole.) Even if he is, you should talk to him and make arrangements to pay your past due rent and this one. (He’s not even sure about the two past due ones, nor am I.) Oh, believe me, he’s aware of it. In this economy, he’s aware of it. (Then why hasn’t he said anything?)
And so on, and so on, until I was a tearful wreck saying I felt suicidal, which then made them practically yell at me “Do you want me to call an agency for you?”
They made me feel stupid. They didn’t listen to me. Instead of trying to really see what they could do to help, they did everything possible to assure me they could do nothing to help.
I stumbled out the door sobbing. When I got home and looked at the cat food, most of it was very dented and had tape saying “Special Handling” on it. Stuff I would never feed my cats normally. But what was I supposed to do? I wept and fed it to them.
Why do they make us feel like that, we poor huddled masses just trying to get some help? I feel two feet tall after one of these hoops. I feel like a cockroach they are wrinkling their nose at after one of these hoops. After one of these hoops, I feel defeated, deflated, somehow less human. And tired. Very, very tired.
Do they buy into that nonsense that we want to be in this position? Do they buy into that crap that we are too lazy to go get a job? What job is there for me, who now cannot even walk a block without running out of breath and having to stop for awhile? Who has most of my teeth gone? Who can’t reach, lift, carry? Whose old fall-back job of typing has been made nearly obsolete due to PCs? Where, in this economy, do I find a job that not only pays well, but which supports my self-worth and does not detract from it?
And so I continue jumping through hoops, hoping for a helping hand that is not there for me.