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Appetizers & Cocktails
Being poor sucks. Being poor when you have kids sucks even more. There’s something about knowing that you can’t give your kids absolutely everything you wish you could that rips little pieces of your heart out every single day. But, for many, it’s a reality. It was for me. For many years, life was a series of weekly struggles where Peter was robbed to pay Paul, where bills were juggled creatively, corners were cut, and pennies were saved to make my $7.00 per hour job stretch as far as it could. And my kids had no idea.
I never thought much about it until recently. It wasn’t until I was having a conversation with my middle son, who is now 29, that I realized that he and his brothers really had no clue they were poor. In fact, they thought they were quite wealthy. It gave me the warm and fuzzies to learn my attempts at subterfuge paid off. It also got me thinking about how I did it. There’s a special kind of creativity and inventiveness borne out of sheer necessity and desperation that only financial struggle seems to inspire. Seriously, when your back’s against the wall, it’s amazing what you can come up with!
Often, it was as simple as presenting what little we had in a creative way. For example, right before payday, it was common for the groceries to run low. This was before…
