Undercover Food Stamps, Part One

Every morning for the past month I’ve followed the same routine. I wake up, pee, and weigh myself. Any day that there is a decline in the previous day’s numbers I crawl back into bed with Donny and exclaim, “Thank God, because I am too damn fine to be fat.” (10lbs down as of this morning… woohoo!)

It elicits a laugh from Donny and provides me with just one of my many motivations to stay on course.  What is sad, though, is that I’m only partially kidding.  Since I was a kid who immersed herself into fantasy worlds via books and television I dreamed of being different.  I wanted nothing more than to be special and I was always the type of person who actually thought, “Well, that won’t happen to me.” No matter what.  I never thought I’d be overweight.  Hell, I was tall, really tall, and my whole life people said, “You should be a model.” Well, models weren’t fat. Of course, models don’t eat and up until a month ago I wasn’t happy unless I was constantly masticating on something… most times Donny’s free will.

Thinking that I was meant for bigger and better than life had handed me is what kept me sane growing up in Brooklyn.  I suppose that was part of the allure of the Harry Potter books for me. Imagine living a life that pretty much sucks only to have someone come along and say, “No, you’re special. You’re meant for more than this.” Even as an adult I think we all feel that way from time to time. It’s why we play the lottery. Though we know the chances of us winning are as slim as the possibility that Paris Hilton will win a Nobel Peace Prize, we still shade in those little spaces hoping that just this once we’ll win and that our lives will suddenly become different, better, special.

As a kid nothing embarrassed me more than going to the store for groceries and paying with food stamps.  I would cry and beg my mother not to send me.  “Girl, aint’ nobody thinking about those damn food stamps,” she’d huff.  Considering where we lived she was most probably right, but that didn’t matter to me because I was damn sure thinking about them. I don’t remember for how long, or under what circumstances, my family was on welfare. I just know that there were times when either my stepfather, or mother, or both would be out of work and it was necessary during those times for them to find a way to feed us. Borrowing money from friends and family wasn’t an option because everyone we knew was in the same, or worst, shape as we were.

The walks to the store with the food stamps mocking me from my pocket were the longest walks ever. I was like a condemned man walking to the electric chair except upon being strapped in my last words wouldn’t be, “I didn’t do it,” or, “Tell my family I love them,” they would be, “I hate food stamps!”  Looking back, as an adult, I understand the need to make food stamps look nothing like real cash, but as a child I imagined this decision was made to add to the shame factor. You couldn’t pass it off as cash to the neighborhood kids in line behind you if you tried.  They were printed on this off white paper with bright colors and might as well have had the word WELFARE flashing across the front in bright red lights as far as I was concerned.

If I encountered a friend on the way to the store I would pretend that I was just out to hang to avoid the possibility that they’d accompany to the store and see the incriminating food stamps. I’d jump rope, play hopscotch, whatever it took to kill time and slip off to the store alone with my neon money.  This, of course, would get me a good cussing out upon returning home when my mom questioned what took me so long to purchase a five pound bag of sugar, but I didn’t care. I had resentment for my mother then… resentment towards her, my stepfather, and our situation as a whole. What a cruel thing to do to a child, I thought. Whereas most children would be embarrassed because food stamps made them different, and no child wants to be different, I was mortified because paying by foods stamps made me just like everyone else in the neighborhood. It didn’t make me special. It made me poor. And then at 23, I understood all too well the circumstances in which people go on welfare.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

When we first bought our house four years ago one of the first things I wanted to get was a TiVo. I didn’t know much about them except that Rosie O’Donnell wouldn’t shut up about how awesome they were. Donny was only too happy to buy one for me because he was sick and tired of tripping over VHS tapes all over the house.

Being able to set a season pass for a show and know that it would record that show every time it came on was a Godsend. We never worried about a dinner party running late or being stuck in traffic causing us to miss the first few minutes of a program. As I was fond of saying, “My TiVo is good to me.”

I wouldn’t even let Donny touch the sacred remote. I would caress it lovingly and Donny swears I got SNE (spontaneous nipple erections) everytime pressing the buttons caused that little *bloop bloop” noise.

He began to call the remote my dildo.

Things could have gotten a little out of control…a little.

You know what they say about all good things…

Thursday my family room TiVo, the first one I purchased, began rebooting itself for no reason. I’d be watching tv one minute and the next I was watching the little TiVo dude swooping down a twisting, winding, slide.

Where are you going little TiVo dude?
Then last night around 11pm I checked my Now Playing list and found everything GONE. I lost: 6 episodes of The 4400, 5 of Meadowlands, 3 of The First 48, 4 of Dexter, 1 of Weeds, 5 of The Sopranos, and countless shit I can’t even remember because I’m so thoroughly devastated.

After waiting on hold for a ridiculous amount of time the completely fucktarded customer service guy came to the brilliant conclusion, “I think your TiVo is dying.” Brilliant deduction. But can you save her, asshat? The answer was a heart wrenching no. He offered to switch it out for a brand new one for $150. I can go buy a brand new for $250 and get a $200 rebate. You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out which is the better deal.

Because Donny is thrifty *cough cheap cough* he’s suggesting that we buy a 160-gig hard drive and just open the fucker up and replace it. That would give me 160 hours of recording time (I had a 40 hour box), so it’s tempting. But something about his digging around in the bowels of my TiVo frightens me. It’s like when someone you love dies and you don’t want them to have the autopsy because you can’t phathom the thought of their corspe being cut open and emptied out on some cold, sterile, table… or in this case a scratched, wooden, coffee table.

I don’t know. I have to think about this, but I need to decide soon. The new season starts in a few weeks and I need, yes need, three TiVos.

And now, a moment of silence for my TiVo box.