Happy Birthday!

We talked today about the kinds of holidays that were available to poor people in America's past- I remember stories my grandmother tells me, about how when she was a little girl she was so excited to get a nickel to buy a candy bar- and that was an extremely rare occurance.

It makes me think about how hard it must be for poor people today- when a nickel won't buy you anything at all, and everywhere around you are signs of prosperity and wealth that you can't seem to grasp. My grandmother never really thought about how poor she was growing up, because mostly everybody around her was in the same boat.

It's not necessarily that the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing (although it probably is), but there is more stuff to have, so the gap is more visible for the people who don't have all the new nice things, like flat screen TVs and cell phones.
I can't believe how lucky I am to have a computer to type this on... I can't believe how lucky I am to be in college.

On the other hand... I'm not yet nineteen and I'm already a couple thousand dollars in debt.
America's a strange country- you can't live if you've got nothing, but you can make out pretty well if you've got less than nothing.