Apples and Oranges

The Artist D

Every Wednesday morning my Grandfather used to get up very early and start out on an adventure. It was a trip he planned for each week and it took that much time to plan it. This magical adventure was a trip to the grocery stores. All week long he would study the flyers that came in the newspapers to chart out the best deals in town. Armed with this information and a stack of coupons he headed out early Wednesday morning (Senior Citizens Day with extra discounts at most stores) to begin executing this elaborate plan of food savings. Elaborate it certainly was as he did not return home until sometime in the early afternoon. Upon his return my Grandmother would be waiting to serve him his tomato sandwich with a cup of stale coffee brewed earlier in the day.

People have the strangest rituals. My Grandparents being poor farmers were forced into some of these rituals. I have no doubt that my Grandfather did this grocery store shuffle because at one time in their lives he absolutely had to. I say this because by the time I was born they were no longer poor farmers. They had made their living off their land and technically were able to reap the benefits. But they chose not to do that. There were no treated luxuries for these folks once they had some money to spend. They still pinched their pennies to the extreme, right up to day they died leaving their very large family with a small fortune of cash.

The thing that always fascinated me was upon receiving that fortune the family treated it mostly as a Christmas present and went shopping. From exactly one generation to the next we went from frugal to . . .  well, to put it nicely, not so frugal. I somehow followed in Grandfather’s footsteps. I am a tight bastard when it comes to money because I don’t have any. In this day and age I find myself desperately trying to do what he did and stockpile a fortune for later in my life. Yet, I can’t seem to do that because it’s very hard to save money when one doesn’t have any.

I think about this whenever I go grocery shopping at more than one store. If my Grandfather was alive today I would ask him if he calculated his time, energy and gasoline into this equation. Sometimes it’s far more frugal to go to one cheap store than hunt around town for the best bargain. Although in those days gasoline wasn’t $4.50 per gallon and his town was not my city. Apples and oranges . . .  literally.

Another thing I think about when going grocery shopping today is how life isn’t fair. Leave it to me to bring you the obvious, but whenever I am spending time on the lowest common human level (i.e. obtaining things to live such as food, clothing, water, air) I am outrageously shocked and disgusted. Here we are in this advanced society where we swear we care, but people still have to worry about if they can afford that bag of oranges or not. We live in “the greatest nation in the world” and asparagus is a luxury.

We’ve been forced to choose what kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel we want. Will it be hormones, medication or groceries? People have all this time and potential being whittled away by doing things to keep up with the basic common functions. To balance transition with a full time job and a full time life! You’d think by now in the 21^st Century we’d be less concerned with how we’re going to feed the family and have enough time to think about how we want to improve our lives. Alas, we do not.

There’s no quick fix or easy answer. We’re stuck and we’re screwed, but we push on. We’ve made it this far which may not feel far at all, yet my Grandparents would argue otherwise. We’ll just have to keep working towards it. Let’s build a truthful reality that makes sense for the next generations of expressive beings. A place where there may be even more time to focus on what’s important while the basic needs go satisfied. Most importantly, let’s make it a place where they don’t abuse the time they’ve been given. The rich make bad examples. People with time don’t seem to know how to use it. It’s something everyone is going to have to learn.

The Artist D is executive editor of Fourculture Magazine. He is also unearthing the underground as host of The Fabulous D Show every Sunday night at 7 PM EST at TheArtistD.com.

Tags: featured, Transition

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion