Students are human beings, too. When I was in college, I often attended class hungry, or sick, or both, because I have disordered parents who sometimes struggle to understand food, clothing, and shelter as it applies to other people, even the very small ones who would have died if it wasn't for our naturally high abilities for adaptation and survival. I had to tell my father that I needed new shoes as a toddler (before my vocal chords were fully formed) by retrieving an old pair from my room and clapping them in front of his knees as he looked down at my scowling face, because he wanted to mock me for my childish inability to speak that I didn't control. It was that hard to breakthrough to them during their more seriously disordered states.
My dad liked to say that he didn't have real parents or role models, but that isn't true. My grandfather died from cirrhosis, but he was also a war hero. My grandmother lived with my step-grandfather, and before my father was married, he lived with them. In fact, my father has never lived on his own. He went from his mama's house to the Navy to his first marriage, and then right into his second one, though they lived together for years prior to that marriage. And when my single grandma was tight on cash (she worked most of her life as a nurse's aide), my father had his uncle in Brooklyn who gave him work through his successful grocery store, providing healthy fresh food for the entire extended family during their times of need.
After my grandmother met my grandfather (and he was that, because even if he wasn't my biological one, he certainly could have been as an Italian-American man), they lived off his great earnings as a cabbie, and he after he bought his own medallion (meaning everything he earned through his fares, he kept), they never really had to worry about money again. Boohoo, right? Same thing with my mother. My maternal grandparents paid for my mom's fancy, private, all-girls Catholic school AND college AND her wedding AND whatever else a young couple needed to establish themselves in residency, with young children in tow. My mom went from her parent's place to her marriage, and after my father left, me and my brothers took care of her (just like we do now), because my mom has never earned enough to support anyone other than herself, and we chip in with that, too.
In fact, I have never had the full support of my parents, a difference that was often made up by my grandparents and their successes, because my maternal grandparents moved up here to Rockland from the city soon after we did, making sure that those times when my mom forgot to pick me up from school (after waiting for an hour or so), I could call my grandfather to pick me up because he was successfully retired from ConEd, and my grandmother never drove, just like many city women of her time and age. Without that support system, I was told by more than one expert that me and my brothers would be dead, and I know that's true because my brothers had the exact same responses to their severe lapses in maturity and responsibility.
But what could my grandparents really do? They could adopt us, but my sick youngest aunt had to live with them full-time, disabled as she is. And then what? How could we all live off of one pension? Besides, we were brilliant and they knew it, so just like them with their disordered parents during "The Great Depression", we went to work.
I have never attended school without working a job (or two or three or four), first with my child's worker permit obtained through the principal at Chestnut Grove Elementary (my older bros told me what to do, where to go, and how to get it), so I could earn with my brothers on their paper routes, and then at age 15 I officially went to work through my mother's signed consent at the Nanuet McDonald's. All of my work history is on public record through our national Social Security agency.
And so here we are. Unlike my parents, I earned all my way through, with or without them. At my S.U.N.Y. school, I worked and took out a parental loan for my mother to make up the difference from the loss of my father's income (I still have the paper work related to that transaction), and I also had T.A.P., a tuition assistance program through the State of New York. While there, I worked as a library aide, and then back here in Rockland at the old Herman's World of Sporting Goods store in the original Nanuet Mall, when I wasn't attending school in Oneonta during the summer like I did one year (so I could transfer to R.I.S.D.), living with my then-boyfriend who took the same required classes. It was the same thing at RISD.
I worked at a pizza parlor, as a darkroom technician, and a teaching assistant in photography. In between those gigs, me and a housemate worked as house painters for faculty who went back to the city, because he and I stayed in Providence to earn extra credits just like I did in New York. In between food from the pizza place, I had to supplement with food from the school's store, which my father and his wife noticed, because they thought books and materials were the same thing as eating food. Same thing with my mom: she didn't know (because she blacks out and has memory-related psychotic episodes) that me and my best friend practically lived off ramen noodles and a hot plate, because we couldn't always afford food from the cafeteria.
It was so bad, some of my friends stole food from the grocery store, and when the worst of us got caught (Dave, you fucking drunk), his parents bailed him out like they always do, because he did it as a lark, while his friend's starved from impoverishment. If Karen and I were short one month, we'd let our friends drink in our dorm room (risking expulsion from campus), so we could return the cans to get food from the one grocery store in town, or, if we were tired and in need of some fun, we'd get pizza and beer from the Black Oak Tavern in town, the same place my boyfriend worked the door when he wasn't working as a doorman in the city over summers, while on break from school.
So, when I saw a school program for a college on Long Island that is a free pantry for students who need to eat and use toiletries (because college students are people, too), it really resonated with me. I have never ever had anyone provide those things for me free of charge.
Not once. Not ever. G-d bless you!! And kids, you need to replicate this program on every college campus around the world, because hungry kids find it hard to pay attention in class. Trust me, I know that better than anyone. Give. That's the reason for this season, as they say. You need to give to get back in this world. You need to give.
