Perspective

I grew up in a middle-class town with middle-class friends. I go to school in a middle-class town with middle-class friends.

For the sake of explaining my thought process, I'm going to loosely define "middle-class" as having everything you need to live comfortably, and nothing more. You pay the bills, feed your kids, grow your savings and go to bed at night on sheets you got on sale at K-Mart (a small victory).

Never in life have I felt I didn't have the basics: food, clothes and my health. Until recently.

(This is going to sound like some big dramatic story, but it's not supposed to be. Bare with me.)

I recently had to see a doctor for chronic fatigue and a misbehaving heart. My seemingly imminent cure came in the form of a slew of appointments-- cardiologist, neurologist and a follow-up with the first doctor. I was so relieved that someone was going to be able to tell my why I had to sleep 12 hours every day in order to barely function.

And then my bouquet of balloons popped.

Of course I had to call Blue Cross New England to notify them of all this new medical stuff. After a web of phone calls between the insurance company, my mom and myself, turns out Blue Cross New England won't cover anything but an emergency room visit because the doctors here are outside the New England network.

So, tomorrow I'm canceling all those appointments. My parents had to pay the office visit fee of $170 up-front because my insurance would have nothing to do with it.

I can't do anything about my health problems until I'm on Elliot's health insurance in October.

I'm an American citizen who sought health care in the United States and I got the door shut in my face because I'm a full-time college student outside my insurance's network and I don't have thousands of dollars to get my heart and brain checked out. You can imagine how crappy my day was.

But I'm not writing a sob story about myself. If I'm pissed I can't do anything for six months, I can hardly imagine the lives of real-life, actually poor Americans who have never had insurance, health or dental. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me after my relatively not-a-big-deal experience, and there are millions of other people in these 50 states who wouldn't even be able to afford that one office visit.

The recent health legislation apparently is going to cost a bunch of money. And apparently everyone is going to be taxed, and apparently it's going to help a lot of people and improve their quality of life.

People will be pissed for a few weeks and find something else to complain about. Probably something related to reality television. In the mean time, people across the country are rejoicing because finally, finally... their kids can have an annual check-up, they can get a mammogram, they can get their mom's diabetes checked. All without cringing as they hand over the cash, as they sign the check and without working overtime to barely be able to pay for it.

Pride and Prejudice

The wind cut through my North Face knock-off and stung my bare toes (earlier the day struck me as one for flip-flops) while I waited outside the library to meet up with a stranger.

Don't worry, I was meeting him for the first time to tutor him, not to take free candy.

A few minutes passed, and naturally, and selfishly, I hoped I would get an "I can't come" text so I could trudge back to my apartment and return the circulation to my toes.

My position near the front door allowed me to observe every person approaching the library. With each new face my mind would whisper a wish, "Please not him..." or "Hopefully it's that guy?"

My inner thoughts seemed automatic until an especially drab and awkward looking student came on his merry way to pursue his education via the rented reference. By "drab and awkward" I mean he was very pale and not exactly dressed the the nines. I interpreted his skin tone as malnutrition and wardrobe choice (it may not have been a choice) as poverty.

If I had a thought bubble over my head, any anglophone near me would have witnessed the judgments and assumptions forming so erroneously in my head. I classified each person's worth according to what I perceived to be their socioeconomic class, based on their clothes and otherwise appearance.

In those dark moments of selfishness I didn't want to have to tutor a smelly student or someone with a lisp. I didn't want this new person to be a creeper or extremely fat. Those characteristics make someone abnormal and weird, which typically leaves them at the back of the social line.

But Jesus healed the weirdos. He had supper with hookers and his best friends were outcasts. So who am I to not want to help a smelly kid with a little Spanish?

As soon as my thoughts about the pale person dissolved, I realized what I was doing and immediately reset my attitude. First of all, I was being hypocritical. I was wearing a too-short jacket from Wal-Mart and flip-flops in February. Who looks more poor? On a more serious note, I know better than to judge anyone on any basis, let alone one I basically fabricated via appearances.

Definitely not one of my finest mental moments.

What's the morale of the story? I consider myself to be a relatively well-rounded person with few vices outside ice ream and babies. Despite a lifetime of education, sermons and the occasional History Channel special, at age 21 I'm still bucking a very basic teaching of Jesus: don't let your pride get in the way of your ministry.