| There are almost an infinite number of ways that we can separate ourselves from one another: Race, sex, economic status, weight, perceived intelligence, where we live, how we talk, how we walk, how we dress and on and on. But each division -- imagined or real -- is not how I want to talk about these separations today. For the purpose of this column I'll say that there are essentially two kinds of people: Those who have extra and those who don't. Extra what? Extra anything. A spare roll of toilet paper in a bathroom cabinet. A freezer with extra food that's separate from the one that's part of the refrigerator. A savings account with more than the $5 minimum balance required to keep the account open. A spare gallon of milk. A spare anything. People who are not accustomed to having enough are certainly not in the habit of having extra. One expression that has retained its potency over time is "maintainin," which means getting by with the wolf constantly at the door with your head barely above water. This way of being is contrasted with "getting over" which means to have more than what is required for survival; it refers to those who have extra -- the ones who were born with silver spoons in their mouths that were not immediately turned in for cash at the local pawn shop. People who have not had to worry about survival are necessarily missing some basic survival skills because they have no use for them. And those for whom day-to-day survival is the norm possess a fat bag of tricks. Some will know exactly what I'm talking about and others will scratch their heads. That's OK To scratch or not to scratch, that is the question -- the answer to which may define which category of human being you fall into. The Silver Spoon people are better equipped to talk about their realities than I because I am a Making Do person. Making Do is the modus operandi I grew up with. It is a philosophy that I hold dear even when it doesn't serve me well, and this is the point that I will eventually try to get around to making. Making Do mothers know how to take a little left-over rice and mix it with whatever else is in the house to make it taste like a meal fit for royalty. Making Do fathers know how to keep the family car running with twine, tape, wire coat hangers and incantations like "C'mon baby, start for Papa" uttered at precisely the right moment in exactly the right key. Making Do people know how to take the cuff out of the pants you wore in sixth grade to yield the extra two inches of inseam you need to play off wearing those same pants at Junior High School graduation. Of course, you have to iron out the crease left by the former cuff using pressure comparable to that needed to transform coal into diamonds, but people who know how to make do perform these kinds of feats without batting an eye. So what's the problem? It's wonderful to not be stuck on things being a particular way and to be able to adapt and flow with and mold our environments to provide whatever we need at the time. And it's also wise to figure out the times when we don't need to invest energy in improvising. Here's a little example: While growing up, my family had one sharp and rather large kitchen knife. It was the knife we turned to when we needed to do serious cutting like thick chunks of beef or pork, or to separate whole chickens into their component parts. Well, one day a long, long time ago, the tip broke off of the knife but we continued to use it. Repeated sharpening, over the years, made the cutting edge of the blade concave -- but we kept using it. I visited my parents, in their New York City apartment, in the early 1990s and that damn nub of a knife was still their main kitchen knife. Why? They were entrenched, invested, hypnotized by the idea of making do with whatever they had. A noble idea for a period of time and just plain silly and useless for ensuing decades. There was nothing romantic, utilitarian or necessary about using that remnant of a knife to saw away at meat -- year after year -- when they could have easily bought a new knife (or several new knives) along the way. My father dropped and broke the plastic handle on his shaving brush a long, long time ago. Rather than buy a new brush he taped the bristles together with tape. Very innovative and functional. Necessary at the time he taped the bristles together, but unnecessary decades later when habit stood in the way of replacing the shaving brush and the kitchen knife and who knows how many other things. Maybe that's what adult kids are for: to replace broken knives and busted shaving brushes. So many of our limitations are self-imposed. We become accustomed to carving off ragged pieces of meat with dull concave knives with broken tips because somewhere along the way we have convinced ourselves that we deserve this level of drudgery. We shave with dull razor blades and lather up our faces with slithers of bathroom soap and taped-together bristles instead of shaving cream and the razor de jour with three blades or four or the inevitable five or electric razors that pivot and swirl and contour to Adam's Apples (for the men's model) or gently cut the hair from bikini lines of women who have never worn nor care to wear bikinis. Ideas that we once held about money and how to earn it; ways we've pictured how large or small our lives could be; specific amounts of money that we imagined we'd earn and how we'd earn it; whether we'd live in tiny, smothering apartments or mansions in glorious cities or in the country; whether we'd live hand-to-mouth, barely have enough to get from one week to the next or have income sufficient to invest portions of it in the stock market. And, of course, there are those of us who have learned to give the appearance of being "successful" while we turn all our pants pockets inside out every morning in search of that elusive dollar bill or quarter. You know time is running out when turning up an overlooked nickel brings squeals of delight. So the answer isn't deprivation for the sake of deprivation, and it's not trying to keep up with the Joneses who have a relatively late-model car with the name of a questionable finance company listed on the title, an apartment full of nice furniture and electronic things financed by pay-day lenders with repo squads hiding under the counters. The answer seems to be to walk the narrow path between the two apparent choices. Learn to discriminate between the days when it's handy and wonderful and resourceful to know how to transform old, tired left-overs into a delicious meal and days when you can actually buy the food you want to prepare for your family. Learn how to separate out the days when it's noble to put pieces of cardboard in your shoes to cover the holes that killed your last good pair of socks and when you should go ahead and buy another pair of shoes. And while we're at it, it is also essential to explain to our children how many hours of work it took to buy the shoes that they have on their feet -- whether they bought the shoes themselves or if they were purchased by mommy or daddy. For example, if sports shoes cost $100 and whoever bought them earns $10/hour, then it took 10 hours of work to buy the shoes. It's not a matter of right or wrong. It's a question of choice and positive discrimination. Sometimes it is necessary to shout in order to be heard. Sometimes the shouting that has gone on for a long time has yielded more sensitive ears and we can be heard using normal voices. It is useful to know how to (metaphorically) kick down doors when access is barred. It is also smart to try the knob first. We may find that the door has been unlocked. To my way of thinking -- and I hope I'm right -- people who are not accustomed to having extra anything and who have, of necessity, devised countless ways to survive are at an advantage. They know how to survive when the lights go out or when the cupboard is bare. Waves in the stock market feel like ripples if they are felt at all. But the advantages that come along with this diverse experience is only a plus if the hard-earned skills are blended with the savvy and gumption required to seize new opportunities that render some skills less useful, and in some cases obsolete. Different tools are needed for different parts of the journey. The question is now as it has always been: What do you carry forward and what do you leave behind? |
| Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes The dangers of making do |
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