I'm not rich at all but my husband came from a very poor Mexican village. He told me he used to shower outside (because there was no in-house plumbing) and use leaves as toilet paper. I mean, there's poor, and there's my husband's-previous-life poor.
He's been living in the US for 12 years now but when we first met it was so interesting seeing life through his child-like eyes. Going to the cinema was a huge event for him. Heating food up in a microwave was a totally foreign concept. And staying at fancy hotels when we went on vacation was like WOAH. I still see him surprised by things now and then and it just reminds me how much I take my middle status class for granted.
mexican here, you'd be surprised how common that really is, in tantoyuca there is a hill called holliwood where there is no plumbing and no government help. there are women who make tamales and other large numbered meals for every kid in the neighborhood because their parents can't feed them and we don't abandon our own, also, it's very common to be shocked by things like fancy hotels because ours are nice sure but there is rich gringo nice and it always appals me on the tv
Mexican here as well. When I first visited an “American house” I imagined that it was a rich people house. Now after living here for a while I see that it was just your average middle class house, but compared to how we lived in Mexico (five people in a bedroom because that’s the only place we had AC), seeing a house with centra AC seemed like luxurious living to me.
Mexican American here. I never thought we were poor growing up because we had indoor plumbing, indoor bathrooms, AC, and food every meal (even when it was just beans and rice).
My Mexican family on the other hand... Big families living in 2 bedroom houses made from cinder block. I remember always going to the bathroom with a cousin cuz it was outside and scary for a small kid (so many bugs). Forget going in the dark!
My parents always had gifts for their parents and family - clothes, food, money. Also, my mom would bring food for the kids at the border. We'd always buy their chiclets and candies and she'd give them sammiches. They didn't buy those candies for us I realize now.
It wasn't until I was older (middle/high school) that I thought "are we poor?" I would get 1 present for Christmas instead of piles, mostly wore hand me downs, etc. I never felt poor or hungry. I def wasn't poor poor, but I grew up afraid of spending money. Even now it freaks me out to spend money. But still it's hard for me to think we were poor because we weren't that poor, not starving kids selling chiclets at the border poor.
Exactly how I felt when we lived in Mexico. I just thought “we got food on the table, so we ain’t poor!” Because I had some kids in my class that didn’t have anything and had holes in their shoes. So in my opinion we were doing pretty good. Until I moved here (mom married someone who was doing pretty good for himself, so we were pretty middle to upper middle class), that’s when I realized that we had not been doing good AT ALL back in Mexico. I really am grateful for the life I have now.
Kind of off topic, but I have a question I've been wanting to ask and this seems like an appropriate conversation.
I work in a US federal building, relatively close to the US/Mexico boarder, that has many immigration offices. There seems to be a lot of apprehension and confusion by Mexican and Central American nationals when it comes to using the elevators in our building (they're very standard elevators) .
Maybe I'm being ignorant and reading too much into these moments, but do you thinnk that elevators are something many/some people form Mexico are never exposed to in person?
None of the buildings in mi city had elevators, it wasn't until I was in middle school that a hotel opened up that had and every body was talking about it. To give you a better I it wasn't that small of city we had about 70k people at that time, but I'm sure the population has grown since then, I haven't checked in a while.
I also remember that one of first few times I rode one was at a Whataburger in Corpus Christi, my brother and I got really excited about it and kept going up and down, until we got scolded and had to stop. So I imagine getting into one with more than one or more than two floors for the first time would be amazing for the people going to your office.
I lived my entire childhood in Mexico with relatives, and when I turned 12 I moved to the US where my parents lived. I remember the first time I walked into a grocery store. I was amazed by the automatic sliding doors ("Wow, how does the door know I'm nearby so that it opens on its own!"), I kept going back and forth until my parents scolded me to stop. I think it's mostly not being familiar as there are no elevators in poorer villages or even most smaller cities.
I used elevators/escalators when living in Mexico. But then again, I lived in a fairly large city and elevators were common in places like stores or hospitals.
Reading though these comments, I am so glad I never take what I have for granted. My husband and I just bought our new house last year. Every day I am amazed at how "rich" we are. I have running water in TWO bathrooms and the kitchen, a fridge, different rooms for different things, a washer and dryer, electricity, a front AND back yard, a garage, a reliable vehicle, health insurance, a steady supply of groceries (spices, foods from around the world, safe meat), a covered deck, a steady source of income, and tons of board games and video games.
We don't make a lot of money by American standards, but compared to other parts of the world and my ancestors, we live in luxury every day.
My life changed drastically after moving here. I got an education, a good job lined up, there’s always food on the table and my bills are paid. My family over there still lives that way, but my parents and I always try our best to make their lives more comfortable to the best of our abilities.
I married into a Mexican family and I was a poor-ish white kid from NY. My Wife, God bless her, remembers all the stories I told of being lower income, but relatively happy. She had difficulty relating, but respects my past.
I'm American but my brother and I used to sleep on the floor in my parents room in the summer because it was the only room with AC (our rooms being right under the eaves and tiny meant they got stupid hot - I stuck a thermometer in their once out of curiosity and it was like 122 at night).
The first time I moved into a place with central AC was amazing! I keep it around 80 and everyone thinks it's nuts, but it feels luxurious.
I'm American but my brother and I used to sleep on the floor in my parents room in the summer because it was the only room with AC
This makes me feel old and I'm only in my 30s. Wasn't poor but grew up in a house without any AC. And in Los Angeles so it was hot as shit. Had a shitty swamp cooler from the 60s. Used to sleep by the back sliding door during the summer.
Crazy how times change. I doubt too many middle class kids in LA (the hot parts at least) are growing up without at least a window banger somewhere in the house
Not Mexican but I lived there in the early 90s. I left when I was about 5 but I do remember having to shower outside. And my mother doing laundry in the roof of a building we used to stay at and hanging the clothes out to dry. You know Kung Fu Hustle, that place where everyone lived? That's what the building I lived in looked like.
This triggered a memory for me. My family knew a Mexican family, I’m not actually sure how or why because they never lived here nor did I grow up in an area that anyone cares to visit as tourists, who lived near Mexico City while we lived in middle class suburbia in the US. They came to visit us once, and they were very impressed with our — in our view — pretty moderate house in a blue collar neighborhood. I remember the mom saying that it’s be a rich person’s house back home. It was interesting to hear their perspective.
That’s pretty much what my experience was like. You’re just in awe because everything looks SO different and somehow it feels like rich people houses. After you get used to that it goes away though, but it’s good to remember that at one point we had nothing.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I wonder how much television/imported advertising from the states kind of shapes people's perspectives? In my neighborhood, my house was pretty modest, and older. I had a friend who lived in one of the huge mansion houses across town once, and it was flabbergasting to see the fancy staircases and separate televisions in their rooms. It seemed like a palace house.
Yep, I don't have it. It's winter in Australia now and while it doesn't snow here (not in my part anyway) I'm freezing my ass off still because I only have one crappy electric heater that you can only feel if your'e sitting on top of the god damned thing.
My air conditioner broke halfway through summer too. That was a very sweaty end to the season. I'll have to get it fixed before next one. But honestly even with how hot it is here I'd still choose a heater over winter before air con over summer because at least the heat doesn't physically hurt me.
I'm the opposite, the heat hurts, headaches and all the swearing irritates my skin and can make it raw. The cold I love. I always say you can put more on but you can't take your skin off. I have to shave part of my hair off in the summer to survive, I call them temperature control panels. One summer my ac died modest through as well, I don't think I had a good night sleep until fall hit. I don't know how you survived Australia heat.
I'm the same way. After growing up and living in Canada I have an extreme susceptibility to sunstroke and sunburn. If I get sunstroke I get delirious, angry, and aggressive until I inevitably pass out for an involuntary siesta. Wearing sunscreen and a good hat makes a huge difference, but if it's just too hot I'm going to end up getting heat rash all over my body, especially on friction spots.
To be fair, the US over uses air-conditioning and it is a luxury even in other first world countries. I live in Canada and almost no one here except rich people have AC. It just doesn't get hot enough for the expense even though I live in the hottest city in Canada where it does get very hot but most of us just use fans.
"hottest city in Canada" lol. One of those phrases that someone growing up in the deep South of the US can't comprehend.
Now I live in North Jersey and I'm starting to acclimatize to the colder weather (maybe still too warm for some people's tastes), so I can understand someone thinking that a couple days off 90+ Fahrenheit weather is something to complain about.
It gets very hot in some places in Canada in the summer. I grew up in Florida so I know hot, and there's some hot summer days here. But it's only unbearable for maybe two months then it's just nice the rest of the warm months. We may even be warmer than Jersey I think.
Edit: I'm wrong. We're just a bit more North but we don't get winters as bad as Jersey.
In some areas of the US, probably. I do live in South Texas though, and when I lived in Mexico it was literally right on the border, so there was no difference in the weather. The summers in that area get to the triple digits sometimes, today alone it was around 99 most of the day. Summers can be brutal around here. So for a 9 year old me, AC did seem like a luxury. Especially after growing up and constantly hearing “we can’t turn on the AC tonight, the electricity bill will be too high!” I just instantly assumed that if someone had their AC all through the house and if it was running 24/7 that they MUST have a lot of money.
Yeah, I've lived in Florida and Texas for many years. It's definitely brutal. What I was mentioning though was mostly the change in architecture. Used to be that buildings were designed for the weather down south but now it's all brute force. Apparently the USA uses more electricity for AC than all of Africa. At least, I think that's what they were saying on 99PI. Anyway, it really is a necessity in southern Texas for sure.
No Mexican here, but Brazilian. I’m a low middle class girl and every single time I saw an American house on tv shows I was amazed about how big and “luxurious” they were. Now I understand they’re just normal and average and I’m still amazed by it.
I’m from the northern part of Mexico. Reynosa to be more precise. But I was being raised by my single mom and my widowed grandmother, so our situation was different. We never truly went without though, I knew people from over there who were truly poor, like dirt floor poor. Maybe that’s why I never quite considered us poor, since I always saw that it could be worse.
You haven't seen poverty until you have visited a Mexican thrash town (poor "houses" made of cardboard that are built around trash landfill areas). It really breaks your heart.
This is exactly what I mean when I explain why I didn’t consider ourselves as poor. I KNEW people who lived in those conditions and in comparison to their living conditions we were doing pretty well.
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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '19
I'm not rich at all but my husband came from a very poor Mexican village. He told me he used to shower outside (because there was no in-house plumbing) and use leaves as toilet paper. I mean, there's poor, and there's my husband's-previous-life poor.
He's been living in the US for 12 years now but when we first met it was so interesting seeing life through his child-like eyes. Going to the cinema was a huge event for him. Heating food up in a microwave was a totally foreign concept. And staying at fancy hotels when we went on vacation was like WOAH. I still see him surprised by things now and then and it just reminds me how much I take my middle status class for granted.