One thing that interests me is that my family seems to expect everyone to live as if they are very poor, even when they are not. I remarked to my hubby, while scrubbing the stove burners one day, that some of my relatives would [defecate] bricks if they saw me using a steel wool pad ONCE, and then throwing it away. Hubby, who comes from a middle-class family, looked puzzled. "That's what you're *supposed* to do." But no, in my family's house a used steel wool pad would be sitting behind the faucet on the kitchen sink, to be re-used as many times as possible until it crumbles in rust. Mop up a spill with a paper towel? The horror! Use a rag! I have relatives who boast about buying all of their clothes at thrift stores; it's almost like they're having a contest to see who is the most tight-fisted cheapskate. (The term "reverse snobbery" comes to mind.) If I buy something at even so "upscale" a place as Wal-Mart, I'm looked at askance. Why? Because I bought it (shudder) new! How wasteful of me!

There was no virtue in making myself a winter coat from scratch, stitching it by hand because it was too thick for a machine. The materials cost me a good $50, and I could have bought a coat at the Salvation Army for half that. Never mind that thrift stores don't usually carry much in the way of plus sizes. I should settle for something that *almost* fits; just squeeze into it. And so what if my socks don't match? They keep my feet warm, and that's what socks are for. (Again, I was a very unpopular kid at school, looking like that. )

Much of this kind of thinking came from my grandmother, who raised me for part of my childhood. She was a product of the Great Depression, which instills a whole new dimension of thrift. She has canned goods sitting in her kitchen that are rusted and years old, but she won't throw them away because "I might get snowed in." She lives in suburban Louisville, Kentucky, where that isn't going to happen long enough for her to have to live on her rusted canned goods, but she had grown up in rural Appalachia, where being cut off from the world for an entire winter had been a real possibility. So she's trained to think that way.

And once, when my umbrella blew apart in the wind, I threw it in the garbage. The next day I found it back in my room, patched together with black electrical tape, like I was really going to carry that thing to school. An umbrella cost maybe $5 at the dollar store, but no.... why spend money when you don't have to?