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| It'll never happen to a nice guy like you, sir. |
Louis Shalako
If you honestly believe that a person can work their
way up from poverty, then I have the challenge for you.
What we’re going to do is take away all of your
resources. We’ll start you off in a new town. We’ll take away all of your
friends. We’ll write your resume for you. You aren’t allowed to use any of the
skills you have. This will make it a fair challenge because you’re such a
successful person already.
You’re different. There’s something special about
you—you’ve been blessed by the hand of God Himself. It explains your
prosperity, doesn’t it?
God sought you out and did you this special little
favour. We’ve asked God to sit this one out.
But, since you’re so smart, no doubt it will be easy
enough for you to overcome the challenge of grubby clothes and shoes, a crappy
haircut and shaving with a disposable razor from the Salvation Army. You will
enjoy the fact that no one, absolutely no one, listens or gives a rat’s ass
what happens to you.
We’re going to give you some strong meds. It doesn’t
matter if you need them or not, this will make you feel better. We’re going to
numb you down so that things don’t hurt quite so much—surely you can see that
our way is better. Especially when it’s time for clear thinking. Think of it as
an equalizer—because you clearly are a superior person.
We’re going to distort your perceptions so that you
can learn to think like a poor person. We’re going to convince you that the
whole world is out to get you and that you can’t get a break anywhere. Don’t
worry, there are plenty of part-time, minimum-wage jobs out there.
Having a bad day? Why not walk nine or ten kilometres
across town to the Mental Health Survivor’s Support Centre? The coffee’s shit
but it is free—and there are all sorts of people there for you to talk to. If
you’ve got a couple of smokes or some spare change you’ll be making friends,
friends for life.
They’re just dying for a leader—why don’t you organize them,
and then sit there endlessly, listening patiently, while they offer helpful
suggestions on how you can best get things done. You’ve got nothing but time on
your hands—we’re going to help you waste it.
Our time might be precious, yours isn’t. What happens
to you doesn’t matter.
Don’t worry about the homeless shelter, we’re going to
set you up in a working-class walk-up.
We’ll give you a pension of about eleven hundred a
month and tell you that the world holds infinite promise. If that’s not good
enough for you, there’s always welfare of about six or seven hundred a month.
Once you’ve got the rent paid, your problems are over—right?
We’ll tell you when your attitude is the problem. We will laugh hysterically when you fail
and somehow miss all the little victories. That means nothing to us.
You’ll have a card that tells you when you can go to
the food bank. If you call the Suicide Hotline, the cops will be at your door
in ten minutes. Three days later, we’ll boot you out of the hospital and
nothing has changed. You’re still on your own, aren’t you?
Where are all the doctors and nurses now, eh? You’re
still starving, and you’re still behind on all the bills and you still don’t
have a friend in the world.
We’ll give you a bus pass, so that if you want to go
west, first you have to go north, south and then east before transferring.
There’s a twenty minute wait between buses.
You say it would be quicker to walk.
Haha! Sorry, but we just broke your back, cut off your
legs, we’ve been starving you for many years now. Anyway, that bus pass is a
sixty-dollar value. You seem rather ungrateful.
Oh, we’ve decided to jack the price of food. Don’t
worry, it’s not inflationary—food and fuel are volatile items, so they don’t
count towards inflation or the cost of living.
If you walk through a strange neighbourhood, and the
cops accost you, don’t take it too personally. It’s just that someone saw you,
and they feared for the big screen TV, the purebred
pit-bull/Rottweiler/Chihuahua mix, they feared for the children. They feared
you were bringing down the property values, the only values they have. They
thought you were going to steal their Lexus.
More than anything they want to judge you, and to smash
your head in with a rock.
That’s because people like you are just unexploded
bombs waiting for a chance to happen. You are sick, and evil, and unclean—the
way God made you in His infinite wisdom
Sooner or later, you won’t be able to take it any
longer and that’s when your thoughts themselves become illegal.
People will get offended when you tell them how you
feel.
They get even more offended when you absolutely refuse
to take their helpful advice, but honestly, you really ought to try and become
a little more like them.
It’s okay. A smart person like you will work their way
out of poverty in no time flat.
Here, take this little piece of paper and these two
shuffling, sniffling old winos. Some little old lady on Brock St. needs
her garage cleaned out.
It pays twenty bucks, and it will probably take all
day. This is your future—working two or three times a month with other useless
people. You can always go downtown and volunteer to help those less fortunate than yourself. There's always someone, eh? That's the spirit.
You and your new friends will be able to get yourself
a case of beer. No need to worry about tomorrow now, eh?
We’ve got that all figured out for you. You’ll be
downtown with a broom and dustpan, picking up cigarette butts in no time.
Because
the devil makes work for idle hands.
END
