Poor Kids Rich Kids

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It is weird, but the children who like themselves, and do not think about rich or poor or any of that other labeling garbage, usually want the $50,000 a year job.

The children who are living in circumstances where the money for the rent or the heat or the groceries is not there, almost always want the bigger paying job, no matter how much they would hate it.

I wish children did not know so much about adult business. I wish adults would keep that to themselves. In my day, in my neighborhood, in my house, I never knew the adult stuff or the money stuff, and it was so much nicer for me.

I did not know there were rich kids and poor kids, and they would separate themselves this way until I reached Junior high school. Middle school I think we call it today. My mother had tried valiantly to make us eat our spinach and broccoli by telling us about the children in China who wanted it, but it never worked. Now that I have had a little experience with sixth graders, I have noticed that they do kind of want to label each other in categories. The haves and the have nots, or the rich and the poor. I have discovered one question that is always answered the same way by the children who consider themselves poor: Here is that question: Would you rather have a job you hate all day long that pays you a hundred thousand dollars a year or a job that pays you $50,000 a year that you love and cannot wait to get to every day? This is one of my most telling questions.

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M. L. Kiser

Date: 12/14/2018 6:24:00 AM

Very profound; we put too much emphasis on wealth and power while most people hate their jobs and stay depressed. Life is not about rich or poor; it's about living. It's a shame, the things that we implant in children's heads that turns them into cynical adults. Well done.

Caren Krutsinger
Date: 12/14/2018 3:04:00 PM

I read a story once about a person who missed enjoying the things she bought and put into her space, because she was perpetually somewhere working three jobs so she could afford the beautiful house she never enjoyed enough to think of as home.