When I was poor and in high school, I lived alone for a very long while in a house that my dad had started to remodel but then he got distracted by a woman and moved to her place. This meant winter in a house in the mountains literally missing a whole wall.
We lived in the middle of nowhere. I hitched rides to school from friends, neighbors, and rarely family. There was no store to steal from, so I stole food from the school.
I was on free lunch, so I'd steal an extra hamburger, sell it for half price to a kid for 50 cents, and I would use that to buy a can of soup when I could get someone to stop by the store. That would be my dinner that I cooked over a wood burning stove since I could warm up that bedroom but the kitchen was missing a wall and was _cold_ (between 20-40 Fahrenheit, but, again, poor, so no good warm clothes). My dad would give $20 every now and then, and I'd use that to buy potatoes that I'd heat in a toaster oven.
A plain potato, a school lunch hamburger, and usually a 50ish percent chance for can of soup was what I ate. I was skinny and hungry. A few years later, I would be able to eat regularly (and now I am doing more than ok), but it took nearly two decades to be comfortable throwing out a plate of food; the poor, hungry kid in me wasn't sure when the next food would come even though I now had food aplenty.
We lived in the middle of nowhere. I hitched rides to school from friends, neighbors, and rarely family. There was no store to steal from, so I stole food from the school.
I was on free lunch, so I'd steal an extra hamburger, sell it for half price to a kid for 50 cents, and I would use that to buy a can of soup when I could get someone to stop by the store. That would be my dinner that I cooked over a wood burning stove since I could warm up that bedroom but the kitchen was missing a wall and was _cold_ (between 20-40 Fahrenheit, but, again, poor, so no good warm clothes). My dad would give $20 every now and then, and I'd use that to buy potatoes that I'd heat in a toaster oven.
A plain potato, a school lunch hamburger, and usually a 50ish percent chance for can of soup was what I ate. I was skinny and hungry. A few years later, I would be able to eat regularly (and now I am doing more than ok), but it took nearly two decades to be comfortable throwing out a plate of food; the poor, hungry kid in me wasn't sure when the next food would come even though I now had food aplenty.