Benefits of Unemployment

Channeling Bobby Jindal and the Kenneth the Page, I’m taking a new approach to my blog entry today. You know, I’ve been ragging in my blog for the past three months about unemployment - how it is affecting me and how it is growing larger each day just like Rush Limbaugh and the number of houses for sale in my neighborhood. Well, today I’m going to tell you the good things that have happened to me while unemployed because as my mama always said, “If you shit in your own nest, you have to lie in it.” And that is what we have done in this country, we have messed in our nest.

Let me tell you about my Daddy, a poor white man. My dirt poor daddy came from dirt poor sharecroppers in this great country. He once rubbed dirt on his teenaged hands to get a job during the Great Depression to support himself. Every time, I see a long line of folks trying to get jobs, I hope that they know to rub dirt on their hands just like my Daddy. Daddy went to the Army during World War II, was a truck mechanic in Louisiana and France before almost drowning in the Philippines trying to swim celebrating after the war was over. But daddy never complained.

And daddy never acted like a poor man. He worked hard, lost money in his business, but put all three of his children through college on bank loans and personal sacrifice. He gave us a much better life than he had so that his children could grow up to amass lots of retirement savings in the stock market. Then we were able to lose our funds quicker than Hurricane Katrina washed poor people out of New Orleans. That’s something my daddy never had a chance to do - lose huge amounts of hard earned savings. Daddy never had any savings to lose.

So here are the good things that have happened to me in the past three months:

• I have had total strangers feel sorry for me, when I tell them the sad story of how both my husband and I have lost our jobs. Everybody loves to hear a sadder situation that their own. I learned this when Daddy lay dying at St. Thomas Hospital over twenty years ago. All those relatives of critically ill patients would be collected in one big waiting room where we could swap stories about the ill health of our loved ones. Mama could always find at least one person whose relative had the same disease as Daddy, only worse. We could sit for hours listening to how bad and awful it could get before the plug was pulled. And after Daddy died, a friend of Mama’s told her that the doctors at St. Thomas had totally misdiagnosed my Daddy. She sat in the living room as Mama grieved and told her what Daddy had died from because it sounded just like the way her own Daddy had died.
• I have learned to solve Sudoku puzzles. Granted yes, I have to cheat sometimes and fill in the top row of numbers, but most of the time I can solve them on my very own. I have expanded my math skills, which should be a plus to my resumé. I never could do math outside an Excel spreadsheet, and only then if the formulas were right. Sudoku wasn’t even around for my Daddy.
• I have learned to live on less income. By using some savings that have not been lost on Wall Street, we are making our house payments. We gave up drinking and not just for Lent! No drinking alcohol until we get gainful employment. Oh, I may joke each Tuesday when I see the postman leave my unemployment check that I can now buy cigarettes, beer and lottery tickets, but we buy food and pay for our utilities. An added bonus is that I’m losing weight because I’m not sharing that bottle of wine on Friday nights with my husband because of job stress. It’s less stressful not having any responsibility.

So you see, there is a bright side to unemployment. You just have to find it.