I didn't grow up poor; it was a shock to learn in retrospect that I grew up solidly lower middle class when all along I thought I was middle class. A trip to the Ponderosa restaurant for baked potato and Tuesday cheap steaks night was a treat. Big occasions we celebrated at Red Lobster; I thought the deep fried seasoned hush puppies were so exotic and special.
As the daughter of college professors in a rural upstate NY college town where unemployment perennially hovered at 14% or more when Reagan took office, I experienced the conundrum of having my education-revering immigrant Chinese parents stuff me full of the grandiose superiority of 5,000 years of Chinese culture (largely irrelevant if not a liability to my schoolyard concerns) at the same time I learned that my dad's salary was less than what a unionized big-city bus driver made then.
But in our little town, I got to know well what poverty looks like. Interestingly, my parents showed none of the snobbery you'd think they'd hold and my buddies were from all backgrounds. Friends who were undoubtedly recipients of subsidized school lunches accepted me with my weird ethnic oddities and bizarre home-packed meals, kindly overlooking the slight birth defect of my "Orientalness" with the unquestioning, practical simplicity of a child with little other frame of reference. Likewise I absorbed little flashes of poverty from the way my friends lived; because our worlds were small and our play modest and circumscribed, poverty could hang in the ceiling corners like the cobweb it was to us. It had and has its smells--roach spray, stale week-old clothes--and flavors. Sounds--the neighbor's doings, always through paper-thin walls--and textures: a rubber sneaker sole worn thin as tissue.
But mostly what I could see of poverty's effects was written on the body. A limp from a knee that bent in crazy angles because no brace had straightened it in childhood. Inexplicably amputated ends of fingers (industrial accident?). And very noticeably, the neighbor child's mossy grey teeth. Or the caved, shrunken faces of adults too young to have had even one tooth/so many teeth fall out. Too young, and poor, for dentures.
I've never been poor--truly impoverished. But I know what I've witnessed from people several rungs down than my lower-middle class childhood self. And I can't help but wonder if poverty the world over, rural and urban, literally feels like a toothache: low-grade pain, flares of eye-watering intensity, and finally, loss. A slow-motion ebbing violence with a gathering force brutal enough to knock your teeth out.
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In Kentucky's Teeth, Toll of Poverty and Neglect, NYT
"Mr. Anderson, the maker of dentures, said, 'People shouldn’t be ashamed to smile.'"
Dental Care for Adults Has Gaps, Kansas Citizen-Journal
"While dental care is available to low-income children in Kansas through Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance Program or safety net clinics, it is a different story for adults....Federal Medicaid regulations allow each state to decide whether to provide dental services to its recipients, Schwab said."
Millions of Children Have Untreated Tooth Decay, CNN
"...14.8 percent of Medicaid recipients said their children had not gotten necessary dental care because their dentist refused to accept Medicaid, which typically pays providers less than private insurers."
Most Dentists Do Not Accept Medicaid, Dental Practice and Marketing Management Blog
Boom Times for Dentists But Not for Teeth, NYT
"...publicly supported dental clinics have months-long waiting lists even for people who need major surgery for decayed teeth. At the pediatric clinic managed by the state-supported University of Florida dental school, for example, low-income children must wait six months for surgery."
Necessary Reforms to Pediatric Dental Care Under Medicaid, HHS
Sanders, Obama, Clinton, Leahy Introduce Access for All America Act, Obama Senate Office
Obama-Biden Health Care Plan for Health Care Reform, official Obama-Biden website
Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.
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Posted by: school furniture | April 01, 2011 at 12:30 AM
One of the reason why people ashamed to smile is they have a problem on their teeth.I would suggest that if you have problem of your teeth go to immediately to the dentist clinic near to your place..
Posted by: Las vegas dental implant | May 17, 2011 at 05:11 PM
Excellent article, people shouldn't be ashamed to smile, we are what we are.
Posted by: Implantes dentales costos | December 11, 2011 at 09:13 PM