September 2, 2006 Stories of Labels
#1
A friend once told me a story about her early parenthood.
She and her husband were very young and financially strapped, and were
having a pretty hard time making ends meet. Then she found out
about the WIC program, signed up, and loved it. She started
telling everybody about it: “It’s great! They give
you a check every month, and you can use it for food! You should
try it!”
While telling the story, she was laughing almost out of control,
especially when she told me about the strange looks she would often
get. Then she said, still laughing, “I didn’t find
out until years later that WIC is welfare! Everybody must have
thought I was crazy!”
Now, this part made me laugh. She thought the idea of the
government giving poor parents money to help feed their children was
absolutely fantastic, until somebody called it welfare. And now,
telling the story almost 20 years later, she honestly doesn’t
realize how silly her change of attitude was. She laughed out of
embarassment.
#2 On a recent car trip, I was
playing a mix CD of songs from my past. A friend in the car was
reacting this way: on any song she recognized, she would put her
arms in the air, dance in her seat, and sing along. On songs she
didn’t know, she sat stone-faced and said nothing. The
divide between “songs I know” and “songs I
don’t know” was absolute.
During one particularly long selection, my
friend was looking like a bored judge. No recognition, no
reaction, no enjoyment. In the middle of the song we stopped for
gas, taking our time, and we got back in the car maybe 20 minutes
later. The song came back on, and soon got to a groove that had
happened back at the beginning. As soon as that part started, my
friend shot to action – hands up, dancing, huge smile on her
face. She turned to me and said, “I remember this part!
This is great!”
photo: Jeff Tobin
