To Miss California

         Yesterday when I was at the doctor's office with my mom I sat in the waiting room which was filled with patients waiting to be seen by their doctors. I normally don't pay any attention to the TV's because its either Day's of our lives or Deal or no deal. But The Talk had been playing when we had finally found a seat and sat down. 

Aside from the first word issues that filled the screen like Bobby Brown talking about Whitney Huston's death the hosts of the show started talking about the Miss America pageant. I never pay attention to them because I think there are more important things to focus on in this world than that. But something caught my attention. One of the contestants Miss California made this comment when asked

 "How do we narrow the gap between the rich and the poor?"

And after stumbling on her words and taking a shaky deep breath she said:

 "I think that the rich need to be able to be giving and I think the poor need to work hard and I think the middle class need to come together and find an in-between."

My jaw dropped to the floor, I tried to write it off, tried to ignore it. I was sitting in the only health care center in Savannah that takes government health care. Surrounded by people who are barely scrapping by, people who can't work because of disabilities. The words kept rolling in my head. 

The poor have to work hard? 

Do you even know how stupid and out of touch that makes you sound? 

The thing you never see is what the hard work the "poor" do because at the end of the month it recycles to the next month. The "hard" work we do is so we can pay rent, car insurance, phone bills, food and  take care of our families and a thousand other things. You don't see that because our work has become our LIFE. Most of this didn't ask for this, we didn't have it coming and it's not because we don't work hard enough. I was raised by a single mother who worked her ass off so we could have a roof, food, clothes and a education. She sent her two older children off to college after she homeschooled/graduated them both and raised/educated my sister and I. She did all of this while disabled/on disability.

So I'm sorry but I can't look at you and your thousands of dollars worth of make-up/costumes and take that statement and laugh it off like you tried to.

"Why can't the USA see, I don't know about the economy?"

No, no, you have a point you don't. Because some are born with a silver spoons placed on the dinner table and some are born with plastic. 

And I hate to break it to you but there is no middle class, there is rich and there is poor. 

I hope that I live to see the day where I don't feel measured on my worth and hard work because of a number in my bank account. 

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