The Poor: Clearly Superior

God clearly prefers poor and hungry people--She made so many! This alone makes them superior. Also, their lives’ tortuous trudge endows them with mad skills and virtues along the way.

The poor learn humility early. (That’s still a virtue--right?) The free school lunch ticket and used clothing announce second-hand status from first grade forward. They learn their poop stinks by wiping with phone book pages and unplugging clogs. The well-to-do’s golden toilets and canned stink-pretty sprays fool them into false odor-free pride.

Poor people are often smarter, more resourceful, and more creative, because they have no choice. They learn how to rebuild a transmission, on their backs in the gravel, or walk to their crappy job. They learn which weeds in vacant lots are edible when the grocery money goes for grandma’s medicine.

They decipher the mystery of sewing, to keep clothes on. They can cut their hair with a pocketknife, cook potatoes five different ways, and make their hut sparkle with warm water, a toothbrush, and an old sock.

Meanwhile the pampered few throw money at every problem, seldom learning anything useful.

Poor people are healthier. Walking 17 blocks with a brick of Government Cheese, a giant can of Government Peanut Butter, and a dozen misshapen yams, because you have neither car nor bus fare, is the same as running a marathon. Bored upper class mates hide in a gym, with a personal trainer and big screen amusement, the best they can afford in order to impress each other. Only the bravest get to feel sunshine and breezes.

Poor folks are tougher. They grow up using shoddy, dilapidated, or non-existent sports equipment. Playing tackle football in the street in shorts and no helmet. Volleyball without knee pads on concrete. Futbol in dirt lots glittering with glass shards.

They learn how to fight, stitch a stab wound, and how to run fast while your pants keep falling down. At the not-free-anymore clinic they learn stoic pain endurance from ex-Navy Dr. Qwitwynin N. Gitoverit.

Meanwhile the pampered pansies play on lush turf or green carpet, wearing so much padding they can take a bullet. They see a high-dollar specialist for every butt pimple and NPI (Near-Puke Incident.) As they age, they pay to relieve the agony of Wrinkled Skin.

The marriages of the poor are naturally stronger, since pops can’t afford a mistress, a hooker, or a divorce. He can’t even enjoy free internet porn, no computer nor connection. Moms can’t afford make-up, fad diets, designer clothes, or fancy hair, making her less likely to run off with some other moron.

Too broke to own cell phones, imgayPods, laptops, televisions, or any other overpriced overhyped doo-dad, the impecunious are forced to read print on paper, and talk personally to actual people. Even--god forbid--sit and think. This automatically makes them smarter.

Sitting around unhappy, unfulfilled, or depressed, is a luxury no broke person can afford. They are juggling bills, rebuilding their transmission with a pipe wrench and chewing gum, or inventing an edible meal out of peanut butter, yams, and cheese. If they somehow have $100 to spend on mental health, they know a case of beer and bag of weed last much longer than an hour whining to a psychiatrist.

Poor people tend to go to a lot of church, for better or worse. No job or money? Praying can only make it better since it can’t get worse. Whereas if you have $100 million in the bank, you obviously worship there.

(If “the love of money is the root of all evil,” (1 Tim 6:10 KJV) rich folk are in a bit of a bind. If they keep their cash, they are not allowed into the Invisible Afterlife Playground. If they give it away, they become--shudder--poor.)

Ironically, poor people also party the heartiest. Rich folks’ parties are like funerals without the fun; they’re “so tight you couldn’t drive a pin up their ass with a sledgehammer” as the saying goes. When you have nothing to lose, every day is your last, so you eat, drink, and be merry! (Ecc. 8:15)

Honesty, hard work, and kindness are admirable virtues that rich and poor sometimes share. Being rich is mostly a matter of luck, of being born to rich parents. The emperor’s brat will be “successful” no matter how stupid and lazy. The ninth surviving child of a landless peasant will die with squat, no matter how much he works.

When the penniless observe a sick, hungry, and crying baby, they get a funny feeling inside. Compassion they call it. They might know a lazy bum or two, but mostly their friends and family are struggling with all their might to make a decent life. Rich people would rather club it like a baby seal ‘til it shuts up—or the social equivalent.

Ha-ha, just kidding. Rich people are better, really. They know it’s the workers’ fault when there are no jobs whatsoever, or part-time minimum wage slavery with no health insurance. They know it’s people’s own fault when they get cancer and such. Most importantly, they know it is “good” to spend billions on high powered weaponry to murder men women and children in countries that never did a thing to us. And “bad” to spend any fraction of that to feed the hungry or help the sick in our land. Can’t have them hungry sick people gettin’ lazy!

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