Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

seriously. I sat in the dentist’s chair, getting some super duper periodontal cleaning and *loved* the sound of the scraping and stuff.

why? because I have dental insurance AND a salary that enables me to afford the co-pays.

the last time I went to the dentist, to have a broken tooth repaired, or something, I had no insurance. I was single-momming it on an income well below the median wage. I had no health insurance, let alone dental.

I hadn’t been to the dentist in years. The last time I went, 4 years ago, the ass tunnel of a dentist humiliated me, asking why, why, why had I not been to the dentist and I was a bad, bad, bad girl for not getting an implant and getting a cheaper procedure because, gosh, I couldn’t afford $6000!

I started balling in the chair. I got up distractedly and started ranting: “Do you people not know that 1/3 of this country has no medical insurance? I can’t even fathom how many don’t have dental insurance? I take care of my son, OK? I just can’t afford me. Where are you people from? Pluto? Do you lack the ability to read a newspaper and realize: not everyone has the money to afford cleanings and fillings and fluoride treatments.”

I gave up. They were stoney with silence. I went out to the waiting room to fill out some credit application, tears streaming down my cheeks making a spectacle of myself. If I hadn’t been desperate to get the work done asap, I would have left because I hated the idea of even giving the fucker my $1000 for the work.

I was so humiliated that I’ve had dental insurance for a year now, but I’ve been terrified to go again, worried that I’d only be humiliated by some clueless ass tunnel.

So, when I called, I explicitly told them what I expected to happen: I would not be interrogated by an ass tunnel of a dentist or dental hygienist. I wanted the work done, I wanted a consult about how to get my teeth taken care off, with an estimate and plan for how to proceed over the next few years. I would give them my insurance information, pay my co-pays, and it was none of their business what I had or hadn’t done in the past.

Everything was pretty cool. Apparently, the guy for whom the practice is named decided to have a looksee in on me this week. Normally, I see the younger guy, whom I liked. Alas, patriarch-dentist didn’t get the memo:

“Can I ask” he demanded. “You are a good looking woman. How did this happen that you didn’t go to a dentist for years?”

Fortunately, the dental hygienist with whom I had already had a frank conversation about being a single parent, living on a low income, etc. had klew. She tried to derail him a bit.

I wasn’t playing. I said, “Look. Let’s get something straight. I’m not sure what my ostensibly good looks have to do with anything but, I had no insurance -”

He cut me off, “Well, we get caught up in that world of insurance. People think that they have to have insurance. But you don’t have to have insurance to get dental care. You can…”

Me: “Look. I was poor. Do you understand that? Normally, people who have no benefits from a job, also work in a job that pays pretty crappy, too.”

He just looked at me in disbelief.

And I think I know why that is: people don’t believe it because you don’t “look the type.”

But the other reason? I have observed that, when you are poor and you are in convo with someone who is fairly well off, making a professional-managerial upper middle class salary for example, they *love* to tell you about how they truly understand how tough it can be.

They have to struggle to make ends meet, too. It’s really hard, this person will tell you. They might even delve into their past as a college student eating ramen noodles, or as newlyweds living in, ugh, an apartment!

And when you’ve never known much different than poor or struggling working class you think, “fuck I know. It sucks all around.” And you feel their pain. You believe everybody has problems and really the idea of making 75k a year is so out of reach, you don’t even sit down and think, “Hmmm. What exactly would that be compared to my current take home pay?” You really just don’t think about it. YOu have your head bent so low, making sure that you’re keeping your shit together, that you never think to run the numbers and say, “Hey what? How on earth can you think your life is anything like mine?”

But working among people who have never had to struggle, who’ve come from well-to-do or at least very comfortably middle class homes, what I notice is these folks never talk about how difficult it is to make ends meet on an upper middle class income. Of course, that’s because it is not socially acceptable to do so. Sure, they complain about feeling like they don’t make what they should at this company. But really — they have *no* idea.

I remember when I realized that I’d heard this spiel about how we all have money troubles, and don’t I know it, and chin up, kid, it’s not any easier make 2, 3, 4, 5 times your salary. About a year ago, I realized, I’m making a good income and these people had been shoveling shit at me and telling me it was ice cream.

And I believed them. I used to feel sorry for these people, too. Just as bad as I’d feel about anyone struggling on disability, like kactus.

Not anymore.

The life they lead, the life I know lead, is qualitatively and quantitatively different than the life I’d led before.

I have a job where, when my boss got the sense that I was unhappy in my job, immediately called me in to see to it that I was made happy. That is, he wanted to make sure he didn’t lose me.

I was kind of floored at the, hum, I don’t know: relative power I experienced? I know it’s not “real” power, but there is something assuredly different about working in a job where your employer actually worries that you might quit and will take steps to make sure you don’t.

And there is something assuredly different working for a company that provides health insurance, dental insurance. Fuck: life insurance! I had no idea that companies provide such things. Hell: I have a 401k and it’s been a year now and the company is matching my 4% contrib. It’s amazing. I didn’t know. I mean: I knew, in the abstract. But I didn’t really know.

And when my annual review came up, I got a decent raise, in spite of the economy, in spite of my being bold enough to walk into my boss’s office and ask for what *I* needed — and not getting tossed out on my ear for that audacity of the gesture? Not only not get tossed out on my ass, but actually getting a raise, one for which a special case was made to go above and beyond the normal raise — in order to keep me on board, even at my comparatively high rate. That is, I’m being paid top dollar compared to other developers there — because of the experience. And, of course, finally, I realize: I’m that good.

These perks — relative job security, respect on the job, reward for a job well done, the conventional “bennies” — these are all things that make the life of someone in the professional managerial upper middle class significantly different from someone toiling away in a job that is paid significantly less, that has no bennies, and in a small ass company that has no commitment to anything other than exploiting the hell out of your labor, where the idea that you might get, automatically, a raise every year is like having the idea that Christmas is to be celebrated in August.

So, if you happen to read this blog and think of yourself as poor, toiling away, barely hanging on to the rungs of the stable working class and if you happen to have to listen to an ass tunnel tell you that s/he knows all about what it’s like to have money troubles — but they make 2, 3, 4 or more times your income, etc.?

Tell them that they have their head shoved so far up their ass they could perform their own brain surgery!

If you are or ever have been an ass tunnel trying to commiserate with someone struggling on a below median income, do everyone a favor and put a sock in it. For a change.