We Are FragileMy father used to tell me that, for his mother, one of the worst moments of the 1930s depression was when she no longer had a dime to put in the collection plate at Sunday Mass. She stopped going, though she made her children go. The priest came to see her, but it was no good. She told him she wouldn't "go for free." That's really what the last 20 or so years have been in America, a little chipping away at us working folks until, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, we end up having to go without that one thing we thought we'd always have. It's the tooth I had pulled eight years ago because I couldn't afford to have it replaced. I put my tongue in the gap where the tooth used to be and think about it sometimes. I have a job. I have insurance. I even have dental insurance. What I didn't have was the actual cash money I needed for the co-pay on a crown. Not that year. The $3,000 dental implant was out of the question, and it would be if I needed one tomorrow. This sequestration thing isn't a lot of the national budget, but it's a chip that will be felt somewhere down the line, some little personal or municipal deprivation that's going to send someone a little further back into darkness. Guns we still got. Jesus we still got. An army doing bloody business overseas we still got. Money we don't got. Broke with an army, guns and Jesus sounds a little like one of those really hot countries where the money isn't worth anything and the guy in charge wears a uniform, but if that's the future, I guess I can starve as well as anyone else. I'm an "everything's gonna be all right" guy. Always had a job, from age 14 on. Put my hand in my pocket any Saturday night, there was green money for a couple of drinks, buy a woman dinner. I did it right. I went to college. No kids out of wedlock.
When the squeeze came on me, I was stunned. I wasn't doing anything to anybody. Couple bucks in my pocket. Wore a tie to work every day. Boom! No money for a tooth. Oh, I had money in savings, but I refuse to tap it for anything. I do it the old way. Money goes in the bank and never comes out. A saver. They always told me to be a saver. And everything I use gets cheaper. I shop in that bag-your-own groceries dump where the customers look like the kind of people you see if you wake up in a jail cell. Guess they stopped affording teeth before I stopped affording teeth. What do I do next, start shopping the sad "manager's special" aisle, where they half-price the food that expires tomorrow? Driving home from a diner this morning, maybe a half mile from my house, I saw one of those guys I still archaically call "bums." I know this one. He picks cans out of the trash bins in my neighborhood and trades them in for the deposit money. He's grimy, missing more than one tooth. He may be a drunk or a heroin addict. Both alcohol and heroin are cheap enough that canning makes sense. He's not a crack addict. You can't make enough money canning to keep a crack habit going. You're on crack, you gotta steal or deal. And maybe he's not addicted to anything. Maybe the last 20 years have chipped him down to nearly nothing. I drove slowly past the guy, slow enough to see that he was holding an instant winner lottery ticket and was industriously scratching off the "winning numbers." And I should call down my righteous column wrath upon him, for he knoweth not personal responsibility. But the way I see it, that lottery ticket was the only thing that guy had left, and for a minute or two, he held endless possibility in his hands. I wanted him to hit for $50, even though he'd probably just drink the money or stick it in his arm. Anyway, in a couple more years, he probably won't even have the money to buy the ticket. Maybe I will. To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, go to www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2013 BY CREATORS.COM 
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