Has anyone here ever been hungry? As in going to bed hungry.

[raccoon]

Not as in, I missed my lunch, or I was fasting for some reason, but because you didn't have the food or the money to buy food.


edited for clarity

[Warpy]

1. Yep

It's not fun.

[cynatnite]

2. As in no food in the house? n/t

[raccoon]

8. Yes. nt

[Turbineguy]

3. They don't call them

Starving Student Days for nothing.

[PDJane]

4. Yes.

more than a few years ago, but yes.

I would also point out that I've lived in conditions that most people would find outrageous. A narrow income has a tendency to constrict the mind.

[liberal renegade]

5. indeed i have.

Reaganomics was a bitch....

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Yes. As a kid, frequently hungry, occasionally homeless.

And, more than a few times as an adult.

There is nothing romantic about poverty.

[Donnachaidh]

7. yup.

Rent came first, and many times food was not even on the list.

[ThomWV]

9. Yes

I have, my wife and son have not.

[HereSince1628]

10. Ya

[sam sarrha]

11. during Reagan and Bu$s41 i was homeless, ate out of dumpsters, i joined VISTA twice, 2 year contract

with a stipend of $385 a month in 1987-8, i was the Emergency Services Coordinator for the North Olympic Peninsula, i collected 1,000,000 pounds of surplus food, built food bank warehouses, USDA distribution sites, and started 3 homeless shelters.. VISTA really saved me a lot of suffering, i have Aspergers Syndrome, employment has often been a problem, not because i cant do well, but because of prejudice.

my contract required me to acquire 20,000 pounds.. i got a million

i am 60 now, same problem, worse since i became disabled, lost my hand

[siligut]

34. I am sorry.

I feel for you because my husband has Asperger’s and I am not sure, but if it weren’t for me, he might have suffered.

I just wanted to say something to you.:hug:

[sam sarrha]

47. it is hard to get a job, i have an IQ of 164, but am functionally illiterate, i always do the work

2 to 4 people, i am a technical/mechanical Savant.. i read technical literature or complex work instructions with ease.

i worked at Boeing on the F22 Avionics Development Program/Delta3 Rocket/Sea launch Rocket/F15-16-18/Osprey/C17 and repaired a lot of the circuit boards from the B2, i became the Rework Specialist for Boeing, all thru the microscope clean room work, did 2.6times more work than anyone else on our 24 person team..saved a lot of their contracts. i did Research for the Shell Research Development Corp, standardized all the Quality control/Quality Assurance for Shillings/Spice Islands..McCormic Corp, all 257 satellite facilities..saved them 10's of millions of dollars a year, then got layed off

i dont do well on the job interviews, .they dont even consider my experience.. over qualified, i always say, "cant you see the bargain you are throwing away.?? there is no such thing as over qualified.." but i usually feel it was best... the people that do that usually have some serious personal problems.. wont hire someone who knows what they are doing and show them lated they dont.

i was a gold smith/jeweler/enamelist, studied under 3 european masters, 7 year journyman. couldnt get a job for minimum wage/no benifits after my old boss died. i'm good at adapting.

i reciently lost my left hand in an accident, just had the 4th surgery tuesday.. wont ever work.. i will most likely tell them to re-amputate it, i didnt want to re-attach it in the first place.. if i have a prosthetic, i am employable, i can hold something, do something, get back into electronics maybe.. wont ever be able to use the mess they left me with. i am 59, too old to keep going thru all the necessary surgery, at least 6 more.. my disability is up, need to work 4 months then i'm elegable for 6 more months of dissability, for the last surgery and rehab..

thanks for the reply...

[siligut]

49. I wondered but didn’t want to ask more.

Are you sure your hand will never work? The nerves can remain dead for up to a year or so after surgery, though reattachment is not an area I have a lot of experience in. You know, when a surgeon starts something, they want it to be successful; have you explained the disability funds to them.

I understand repeated surgeries can be very stressful and tiring. Take good care and eat well, I know we start to heal slower as we age.

You have some diverse skills. You also communicate well. Good luck to you.

[sam sarrha]

50. typing makes a lot of difference... i have good verbal skills, i have a fascination with the parts o...

things, words always fascinated me... when i studied science i also studied Latin.. failed the class, but the Latin was a part of something.. i always go to the 4th decimal when something interests me.

the damage to my wrist was severe, the scar tissue, is the problem, it is the adhesion's that are the problem.. , no hope. it would be a benefit to be able to hold anything with the prosthetics.. i could do most of the Assembly i did before..

[uppityperson]

55. Best wishes to you and are you still

on north olympic peninsula?

[MADem]

12. Yes, but that was a long, LONG time ago.

There was more month than there was money! And some bills--like the rent--had to be paid.

It was so bad I was swiping buttwipe from public restrooms, and light bulbs from lamps in public buildings! That sort of went against my code of ethics, but desperate times...

I was hungry a lot. I got good at "stopping by" friends' houses near the dinner hour. Talk about NO shame!

[ConcernedCanuk]

35. Wow - "swiping butt-wipe" - I did that, and even ate cat and dog-food for a bit.

.
.
.

I never went hungry as a child, never.

But now I'm in my late 50's pretty much unemployable, not for lack of skills or experience but because of age.

Unemployment rate is over 10% in my area, and I'm not even sure if that counts people on Social Assistance like myself, or those not on any benefits.

As I enter my "Golden Years" - I make deals for food, and visit our local Food Bank.

Something is wrong.

[RadiationTherapy]

13. Not is 8 years. I eat so regularly, that I rarely even feel hungry.

[stillcool]

14. Once..in my life..

I had no food and no money. I had a job, and I had an apartment, but arthritis prevented me from working for a week and shit happened. I don't have family, and I was too ashamed, embarrassed to ask anyone else for help. Eventually I told a friend and she brought over a bag of groceries. Not a pleasant memory.

[IowaGirl]

15. As a child, and it's not pretty. My mom really was pretty good at stretching a nickel but they had

been poor so long before my birth that they never really caught up until about the time I was in high school. Hey, but I never had to worry about dieting then...

[TechBear_Seattle]

16. Not in a long time, but yes

My mom was a single mother with four children. My dad never missed a child support payment, but even so my mother had to work two and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet. Sometimes we could afford meat; we could make a single beef roast last for three dinners. Sometimes, dinner consisted of a single box of generic mac-and-cheese (with only water to make the sauce; at this point, we usually didn't have either milk or butter) mixed with a can of tuna and the whole thing split between four kids (mom supposedly ate at work.)

Yeah, I remember going to bed hungry.

[Lorien]

17. Yes. Back during the Reagan era when I lived with my ex-fiance

We lived in the basement of a tiny post war home in the ghettos. We were surviving on $80 a month. $50 went to pay for our lodging, the rest had to cover food, gas, etc. He was very irresponsible with what little cash we had and would run out some evenings to buy himself McDonald's and six packs of Pepsi. I survived almost entirely on ramen noodles and bananas back then, but when he blew all of our cash before the month was up I would go hungry. I was terribly thin then and he still would complain that I needed to lose weight. :eyes:

[Lobster Martini]

18. I am looking at a can of haggis, a can of vegetarian haggis, a can of spotted dick...

...and a banana. There is nothing else in the cupboard. I am going to eat the banana first. After that, I am going to have to make a hard choice between haggis and vegetarian haggis. (That's true, I'm not kidding. And for the sake of the wiseguys on DU, spotted dick is sponge pudding. No Spitzer jokes, unless they're funny. And don't ask about vegetarian haggis. I don't understand how it can exist either.)

[Rosemary2205]

48. UM

who's the wiseacre that brought haggis and dick into the house to begin with? :)

Hugs.

[electron_blue]

19. Yes. Why do you ask?

[raccoon]

25. Thinking about the spike in food prices and reading about the Haitians made me think of it.

I haven't been, in my life so far and anyone who has, has my sympathy.

[AnneD]

20. Yes...

In my youth. Mom was single with 4 kids. No minimum wage yet, no WIC, and minimal child support ($48) from jerk wad dad in the dead of winter. Roads iced up and Mom couldn't get to work for a week. Called Dad begging for a little extra money. He told her to manage the money better and hung up. Oatmeal for 3 meals straight for a month (modest amount). When we were lucky we had a box of mac and cheese split 4 ways (Mom didn't eat-or correct us when we licked the plates-just said we didn't do it in public). Remember opening the fridge and just seeing light. Early bedtimes with everyone piled in one bed for heat. Played in the empty dining room with the boxes that doubled as our tables.

Mom always said "We aren't poor, just down on our luck". I remember those times because I was the oldest-the others don't. I remember going to bed and seeing how far I could press my finger down on my tummy. I remember having vivid dreams about food (colour, taste, smells).

Had another spell in the 80's when I was laid off. High unemployment, S&L scandel and Real Eatate bust hit Houston hard. I used up all the food it my pantry-it saved my life. Stole condiments, toilet paper, light bulbs, soap, anything I could use (that's why I was sympathetic to those Katrina folks-you gotta do what you can to survive sometimes).

Yeah, that's why I always have a full pantry and donate generously to the food banks and pantries. Kids shouldn't go to bed hungry, esp in this country.

[kestrel91316]

21. Yep. No food in the house. Not long-term, though.

It was years ago.

[acmavm]

22. Yes. Both as an adult and a child.

It's frightening as a child.

[nebenaube]

23. yeah...

Last night... I'm sick of potatoes/beans/rice etc, I can't stand Ramen anymore either.

[doodadem]

24. As a kid...........

Had two catastrophically ill sisters from a young age, that were in and out of hospitals. No insurance, dad was a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman. It wasn't often, my dad busted his butt, often working 16 hour days to make a buck. This was also back before food stamps and welfare were common, and my dad would have never taken "a handout" anyway. Proud, WWII vet......... Sometimes dinner was cornbread and milk.

I can remember driving from Louisville down to my grandparents in South Carolina. My dad would have been driving all night, and would try to get some sleep while my mom took us into some roadside diner for breakfast. I remember her trying to figure out how to stretch the $2 my dad had given her to feed 5 hungry kids. She'd buy a couple pancake breakfasts and cut them in two....

[Javaman]

26. Yes, indeed. the best part is dreaming about food.

yeah that was really fun. :(

[azmouse]

27. Never.

I consider myself very fortunate.

[Forkboy]

28. Sometimes.

The odd thing is that when I wake up I'm not that hungry anymore, which can come in handy.

[Akoto]

29. I know my grandmother did.

She lived during the Depression. At age 90, it still affects her behavior. She pockets extra condiments from restaurants, keeps food until it starts to mold, etc. I had chocolate at her house that was like chalk! We try to convince her that it's no longer necessary to do those things (grandpa left her very well off), but it was such an experience that she just can't shake it.

[renate]

30. reading this thread fills me with admiration for parents

(Particularly for moms who don't get enough child support, but of course also for the fathers as well as the mothers who work themselves to the bone for their families.)

I've been very fortunate and cannot imagine the pain of seeing your kids go hungry despite doing everything possible to get the money to feed them. And of course the parents go even hungrier than the kids.

Not that a person has to be a parent--all the stories here are very moving. No one should ever have to go hungry--hunger is such a basic and horrible form of suffering. But the pain of seeing your kid suffer more than doubles the heartache.

[guitar man]

31. Yep

sure have. Lived in a van on the streets for over 6 months in a hard stretch during the Reagan "trickled on" era. Had to keep moving from place to place a lot of times to keep my home from being impounded, so it was buy gas or buy a little something to eat many days but not both.

I remember one week I filled out 110 job applications trying to get something, anything. I had to keep track of everywhere I had applied and check back since I didn't have a phone. Not so much as an interview, let alone a job came from any of them.

All these fuckers that get misty-eyed over Reagan can suck....my...ass :grr:

[Marr]

32. I can't say that I have, no.

Even when I moved out at 18 and didn't have any cash, I could scrounge up the 50 cents for a cup of noodles from the grocery store. I had some very lean weeks, but I can't say I ever really went to bed hungry.

[DangerDave921]

33. Nope

Grew up middle class, went to college, and worked since then. I've been very low on money, but could always scrounge together pasta with butter. Or rice and beans, which is awfully cheap and good too!

[Norrin Radd]

36. Yeah.

[MadHound]

37. Yes, on and off for awhile

I spent a couple of years homeless, and some of that time I was quite hungry, starving hungry, down to a hundred and fifty pounds(on a big 6'5" frame) hungry.

Yeah, it sucks.

[Cleita]

38. Not that kind of hungry, but I once lived in a country that

suffered food shortages so there would be food items, like meat, or seafood, or bread that we couldn't get for many months, sometimes even years. Also, during WWII we had food rations. I was a little kid then and I remember my mother begging the neighbors for ration coupons for milk that they didn't use because she didn't believe I was getting enough milk with the ration coupons allowed her. But no I never had to actually go to bed hungry.

[emilyg]

39. Yes.

[NNN0LHI]

40. No always had something to eat

Might have been Miracle Whip and onion sandwiches but I always had something to eat.

Don

[aikoaiko]

41. No -- I have never been hungry because of a lack of resources

[bean fidhleir]

42. Yes, in childhood. The relief check never lasted the whole month.

[varelse]

43. Yes

Not very often, but it did happen.

[Romulox]

44. yes. nt

[Xithras]

45. I've been poor and homeless, and I've been a millionaire.

There were many points during my childhood when we had no electricity, or when our water was cut off and we had to flush our toilets by carrying buckets over from a sympathetic neighbors house. There were times when the only meals I ate were those provided by the government meal programs at school, and the scraps my mom snuck out the back door from her waitressing job (as an aside, I also remember when one of her bosses caught her, and instead of firing her, ordered her to bring us into the restaurant every night so we could have a proper dinner at no cost...there are still good people in the world). I remember my moms joy when she qualified for a government training program that initially sent her to school to become a paralegal, and her depression when she realized that accepting the admission would cut the hours she could work. She went anyway, and we lived on ramen and rock soup. She finished that training and became a low-level paralegal. She later got a law school poverty scholarship, and became a lawyer just as I was graduating high school (she's a family law attorney today doing a great deal of pro-bono work to get women and children out of abusive households).

I also remember how militant she was that we do our homework every night so we could "make something of ourselves", and how depressed she was when I graduated high school and jumped straight into drugs and party mode...and homelessness. I already had a kid at that point (I was a smart kid intelligence wise, but I was a real dumbass as a teenager when it came to being responsible) and eventually realized that I was sentencing my daughter to share my fate if I didn't do something to better myself. I got into school again, worked some of the crappiest jobs you can imagine to pay for it, and eventually became successful.

My fling with being a millionaire was mostly caused by the real-estate bubble over-inflating the value of some land I own, but I'm still a successful business owner and a part-time college instructor. My life is pretty good today. I'm a Democrat because I remember when it wasn't, and I know that there are still kids out there today slogging through the same bullshit childhood that I had to endure 30 years ago. Even worse, I know that many of the social nets we relied on to stave off starvation, and later to pull ourselves out of the hole, don't exist today because the Republican privateers have attacked them as inefficient and socialist. I'm a liberal because I grew up poor and hungry.

[purji]

46. yes

I was always able to feed the kids though.There were a lot of times I would tell the kids, no I'm not hungry, you eat it. All I can say is thank the gods for Aldis.

[slor]

51. Many times...

sadly. Funny enough, it was during the reagan/bush years.

[yewberry]

52. Yes, as a child and as an adult.

I don't like thinking about the peanut butter and mustard sandwiches or the barley and catsup era of childhood. Yuck.

As an adult, though, that was hard in a different way. I did two years of national service with Americorps (ending last August) and got a stipend of $800 a month--for 45-50 hours a week. I was lucky to have access to a food bank, but it's really, really hard to be so broke. Living on stuff that the food bank couldn't give away made me feel pretty bad. I remember watching television and actually crying when I saw commercials with people eating. It was so awful.

It's better now, but we'll be crawling out of debt from that national service for some time. I never want to be that desperate again.

[americanstranger]

53. Most of the time, when I was a kid.

When I started elementary school, my parents couldn't afford to give me money for milk every day. And some days I had no lunch, either.

We lived off of government surplus food - navy beans, cheese, and oatmeal.

My family was very poor. But even though we were poor, my mom tried like hell to keep 9 of us fed. She didn't always succeed.

- as

[TexasLady]

54. yes, this week

[booley]

56. yes but not over along period of time

sometimes the money just won't stretch. and I've broken open my emergency piggy bank so the house could have food. and I've borrowed from friends and family.

But fortunately for me, those times pass.

[cliffordu]

57. Yep.

Lived on the streets, too.