A different perspective
I’ve never been rich, at least not by how maost of us would define “rich” here in the U.S. Growing up, we were a pretty average family who lived in a pretty average home. My parents had pretty average jobs and drove pretty average cars.
I always knew people who were far better off than we were and I always knew people who were far worse off than we were. I never really thought a whole lot about it, but as I got older I began to be more aware of the gaps in our society between the “haves” and the “have-nots” of the world, and even though we never went to bed hungry or without a bed to sleep in, I knew there was a higher end to society that I likely would never be a part of.
In my adult life, my wife and I started pretty low on the socioeconomic ladder. Getting married in your teens will do that for you, especially if you try to juggle work, college, kids and all the other things being a grown-up can throw at you (wouldn’t change a thing, but I’m also not going to recommend it either).
Nowadays, we do pretty goo for ourselves. In my mind we are still pretty firmly ensconced in the middle, but maybe a little closer to upper than lower, thanks largely to my hard-working wife (and I’m OK with that). We are definitely “above the below and below the upper,” like a country song from the ‘90s goes.
You don’t have to drive far from my house in Marion to see stark diffferences in how the upperclass and the lowerclass live their lives and I like to think I appreciate what
Continued on Page 15 VIEWPOINT (cont.)
luxuries in life I have. And I recently developed an even greater appreeciation for them.
I have a friend who used to live here in West Memphis.
We worked together at Southland 20 years ago.
Well, about 15 years ago, he moved off to Brazil. I honestly don’t know a whole lot about Brazil but I know that, like most places, there are those same “haves” and “have-nots” in Brazilian society.
Well, without getting into too much detail, he has fallen on some hard times, especially since COVID-19 hit back in 2020. We actually lost contact over the years until a couple of months ago when he managed to find me on social media, which was cool.
The other day, when we were supposed to be hit with all the bad weather (which thankfully mostly missed us) I was telling him about it via text. He told me it was the “rainy season” in Brazil right now, which meant it was basically raining “off and on pretty much every day.” I said that sounded terrible, but he said he actually liked it because crime goes down when it rains and “I get to fill up my buckets so I have fresh drinking water, get to take a shower, wash my hands and face, and flush the toilet.”
After hearing that, I can’t help but think about how much we all take for granted here in the U.S.
