Tim Barrus: New York Times
I cannot shut my family down. Families just don’t work that way.
And yet we begin again every day. I’m in bed smoking medical marijuana that we grow. Or I cannot stand. I am no good on the floor of the house of Usher. Breakfast is being cooked. I have boys to feed. Not feeding them is not an option. I test my bones for fractures. There is that pay gap between what I want and what I am going to get. Families are like that. I zero in on costs 24/7. I worry about prescription drug pricing. No one can fight the insurance companies. It is always war. Some of the boys refuse to go to school. The house is shivering. I caffeine up for the daily fight with doctors. I pass out the pills for the boys who will still take them.
Two boys hand me money. I do not want to know what they had to do to get it. Without food banks we would go hungry. We have scrounged in dumpsters before and we are not above doing it again. There will be hearings today as some of the boys will want to speak to the behavior of the boys who passed out the money. I will not want to listen. Hear no evil… I will introduce the idea of going down to Goodwill today for used shoes. This brings joy to most of them.
They all need the shoes and Goodwill provides divided results as no one can keep all of the boys happy at the same time. Same for coats. All of them hoodies. School rules – no hoodies in class. But underneath the hoodies, it is skin in the game. I cannot shut my family down. It doesn’t work that way.
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