3-21-10...I'M NOT POOR!!!
I think some people always see the glass half empty instead of half full. I am guilty of that myself at times, just not always.
I remember a girl on the school bus saying that my family was 'poor people'. Heck fire I didn't know what poor people were but I certainly was not one of them and I told her so. Told her she better shut her mouth. She said, "Poor, Poor, Poor" and I socked her in that mouth of hers. Well I told her I would if she didn't shut up. She should have shut up. No one had ever told me that I was poor before so I asked my Mamma what poor people meant and I'll never forget what she told me. She said "Clydene poor could mean a lot of things but it don't mean us. We are broke and don't have enough money but broke and poor are two different words". Mamma went on to tell me that the girl who said that to me was poor not me. "But Mamma she has anything she wants" I said. Mamma was patient with me and tried but I was only six years old and just couldn't really grasp full the meaning. My Mamma said it though so by golly for me that made it true. I told the girl that she was the one who was poor not me. She wasn't convinced but I suspect she didn't want another jaw boxing so she never bothered me again.
Later in my life that incident has come back to me many times when someone was trying to put me down. Wealth is not determined by how much we have but by our state of mind. I could look at our old weathered house with cracks in the walls that let in the cold and see a palace. My one doll that was made from an old sock was the greatest toy in the world, my four dresses my Grandma made out of feed sacks were a wardrobe fit for a princess.
It all boils down to how you look at things. Sometimes I have to be jolted a bit to get that thinking back in my head. I get to thinking well poor old me and I see my Mamma telling me I wasn't poor unless I thought I was. Nope I'm not poor. Never was and never will be. I have a wealth of upbringing that will never let me down. I'm rich! Yep!!
