My Parents Aren’t Rich

My parents live in a modest home in Northwest Ohio. They have lived in a total of fourteen homes in their 53 year marriage. They have lived all over the United States but they have come home to retire because they both grew up not too far from this area and now well into their 70’s they wanted to be closer to family, their sisters and brothers, and the people that they grew up with.

By some people’s standards one may think that they were rich, I assure you they are not. By other’s, the one’s that can afford a $350,000 home here in this area, they are just down right poor folk, well that isn’t the case either.

The truth is that even though people come over to borrow $10 here and $20 there, my parents are living off of my father’s Social Security income ONLY and my mom makes a couple of hundred dollars a month doing some sewing for my dad’s old friends in their old business that they both used to run out of the basement where my mother would sew up a storm and make all sorts of things for different companies and my father would do the shipping. He took on the shipping as his full time job, as well as salesman, when he retired from his carrier about ten years ago. None the less, after paying for material, we’re only talking a couple of hundred dollars a month to pay for electricity and heating, something that we all do now and then, you know, side jobs.

You see, to get to the house that they live in right now, my mom and dad BOTH had to have two jobs while me and my three siblings were growing up. At one point my dad even had to have three jobs, well, for over twenty of those years. They used to struggle so hard just to get by and to get the material to make us cloths, let alone buy us name brand cloths that it amazes me that they found the money to feed us too.

During all this time of raising children, these two people also had the gumption to remodel each of the houses that me and my three siblings lived in so that we could upgrade to a better house about every four or five years. Where my dad found the money I have no idea because as I write out my bills each month I struggle myself and while I own my own home, I worked two jobs for several years, my wife also works we have not the resources nor the time to fix up our home. We are however very thankful to the lord and our parents for what we have.

So now when these folks like my own godchildren, who have been raised on the welfare system since birth, along with their parents who collect Social Security too, without ever having paid into the system like my dad did for over fifty five years and I did for thirty years, come over to borrow a $10 bill, it still bothers just a me little because I don’t think that these folks understand that they in fact bring home more money each month than my mom and dad.

They also take advantage of my parents who have that Christian spirit in them and finding it hard to say no to a somewhat nice young person, especially when it is my Goddaughter. However my parents can be just too nice sometimes. There comes a time when you just have to be nice to some people and pleasant to everyone. That's where my grandmother's saying comes into play and has been my New Years resolution and I hope to spread it everywhere; it goes as follows: You can be Oh So Nice Or Oh So Pleasant; I Recommend Pleasant

That saying comes from Jimmy Stewart in the movie Harvey but it is so perfect and is so appropriate for my life….well everyone’s life for that matter. Anyhow, I can’t get this feeling of them being leaches off my mind while at the same time I do care for them dearly. There just comes a time when you just have to say no to people, especially when those people have been living off of the federal government since they were born and have never had a job. Their mother has never had a job, and I mean NEVER had a job…not one, and she still collects Social Security. The last I heard, you had to pay into the system before you could get paid back out from that system. Well, that’s a subject for another blog.

My whole point to this blog is that my parents are two of the most giving people you would ever want to meet but just because they live in a very nice house does not mean they are rich. They’re always working and they’re still in their 70’s. My dad is 76 and my mom is 73. Outside of a bad knee my dad is in pretty good health; well hearth attacks run in his family. Our family is suffering from my mom’s memory problems but her health is great. She keeps busy and is generally pretty happy, well ok she complains to me allot. All in all they are in remarkable health for folks in their mid 70’s but they are defiantly not rich. I wish they were, I would go with them and show them the world.

That’s The Lazlo Report for Friday January, 5th 2007