The poor today are pathetic.

I mean, they're really, really bad.

See, over the years, there's been a push to give poor people the lifestyles of a pseudo-lower middle class. Unfortunately, when we started doing so, the poor lost a certain je ne sais quoi, a style, a culture that distinctly identified them and gave them a certain flair, and haunted their children with memories that we never will shake.

I miss polyester. I mean, if slacks can't throw sparks when rubbed together in the dark, I don't want 'em. Polyester slacks and jackets were the Gucci of the lower class. They were a style all their own, and while they certainly did invite wedgies, those wedgies were our class distinction, baby. If you didn't have friction burns on your upper thighs, you just weren't "with it" in the world of the trailer trash.

I miss generics. Not store brands. Generics. Black and white packaging, items that screamed "I'm poor and I'm proud" when they moved from the shelf to the cart. A cart full of those black and white beauties pretty much announced to the world they were going home to a place where the rats outnumbered the people and where cockroach races and pitching pennies were common leisure activities.

I miss station wagons. OK, I know what you're thinking. But these fruity metrosexual baby minivans just can't call themselves a station wagon. Nothing announces your status quite like a car with the wheelbase of a small mobile home and the maneuvaerability of a Patton tank. A car full of kids loaded and on their way to the Mecca of white trash vacation hot spots, the Grand Canyon, was an annual summer right not wholly different from the returning of the swallows to Capistrano.

I miss bowl haircuts. Haircuts that hollered "my momma cuts my hair. Wanna make something of it?" For some reason, bowl haircuts and polyester enjoyed a strange, symbiotic relationship.

I miss low income housing. What do we mean having these high class projects? Who among us former white trash kids hasn't pulled a sink of the wall of a sleazy shantytown made for low income families and thought we were the Incredible Hullk or Ben Grimm (oh, yeah...and when did the FF become FASHIONABLE? That's another blog entirely!)? Or listened to the arguments of our best friends' parents through the paper thin walls (or the amorous practices, for that matter, which is how WE learned about sex...somehow sex and religion were inexplicably intertwined in our minds, but I digress! Section 8 and housing vouchers have taken away the distinctive domiciles of the poor.

Lastly, I miss food stamps. What's with this DEBIT CARD crap? I want technicolored money that makes people think I'm either Canadian, or I'm poor, and I damn sure better be the latter or their kicking my butt all the way back to the Great White North! Debit cards give an air of dignity to the poor, and that makes them "uppity".

We've got to get these poor status symbols back, and get them back quickly. We can't tell who the poor ARE anymore!