A Comb for a Car, My First Trade! — Day 9
I made my first trade in my crusade to trade a comb for a car. It wasn’t a comb for an electric Epiphone Les Paul ukulele with case and purple strap as I was pondering in my last post. It was a comb for a semi-deflated volleyball with soft play technology.
I am going to start this project with the right mindset, and trading a blue comb with my daughter for an Epiphone Les Paul ukulele with a purple strap is not the right mindset.
Trade and barter should create value. Two things that once had relatively little value find a new owner and once again become valuable. If I traded my daughter, it would still just be us, with a comb and a ukulele. She can use my comb whenever she wants, and she hasn’t touched that ukulele in years.
My neighbor needed a comb. She only had brushes, and she tends to keep her hair a little bit wild. She told me that sometimes she gets the crazy idea to part her hair but then struggles with the brush to make a straight line and usually gives up. Now she has a comb to make a straight line with.
She asked me about who does my hair, and I told her that I did. “And your daughter’s, too?” she asked. “Yep,” I answered. Then we sat and talked about hair cutting and dying techniques, strengthening our neighborly bonds.
She traded me a semi-flat volleyball, used only once. I’ll pump it up and find someone who wants to play volleyball, or who needs a soft one, which are best for learning. Had volleyballs can do some damage if you don’t know what you’re doing.
So, there we go. Two useless things put to use. Two lives a tiny bit better. Two neighbors who know and understand each other a little bit more. My first trade was a success. I’m inspired.
I look back at my first post and sulk a little. Instead of excitement and curiosity about my new quest, I worried about my inferiority complexes and unworthiness. I explained myself, using logic to prove that I am responsible and worthy. I wonder who I was talking to?
I was probably five years old the time I was sitting with my father, eating cheese puffs, a treat I loved but rarely had access to. Suddenly, as my hand excitedly dove into the bag for another handful of cheese puffs, my father grabbed me hard by the wrist and pulled it out. He started to grill me about why I was taking cheese puffs by the handful instead of just taking one at a time.
I was shocked. “I don’t know,” I muttered, because of course I didn’t at that moment, being utterly confused. “You’re taking handfuls so that you can have more. Don’t be greedy!” I remember my head hanging down, the shame, the lump in my throat. I had one more cheese puff, which didn’t taste good. I was never able to really enjoy Barbara’s cheese puffs after that. Our bodies remember.
I later realized that my father had been wrong. I was taking handfuls because it was efficient. If I can get three or four in my little fist, that’s two or three fewer trips into the bag, and two or three fewer times I have to contend with the other, bigger hand that occupied the bag every 15 seconds.
The things our parents teach us have little to do with what they say; we remember what they do and how they make us feel. My father shamed me. He assumed I was greedy and needed to be broken from the habit. Thus, so did I. How could I have the audacity to freely eat cheese puffs?
My father doesn’t live in a vacuum. I, and many like me, endure these lessons from all sides our entire lives. Then we pass on what we learn to our child. Unless we stop and take a stand.
Taking a stand and changing how we do things is how we stop ancestral trauma and it is how we change culture.
Children growing up in poverty learn, with each day that passes, that we are undeserving. Why else would they have all the toys, or ballet classes, or a pony, or a loving family going on vacation to an exotic beach?
And I am not even getting into the garbage that I’ve seen in the comments sections of the internet.
American culture, with its outdated capitalist ideologies, wants us to believe that if we don’t have something then we don’t deserve it because a) we are lazy, b) we are dumb, or c) we just got to shake it off and work harder. We aren’t supposed envision a different kind of life, but stick to the old-fashioned way: being a cog in our capitalist economy because it’s the best thing that has ever existed (sarcasm here).
If there is one thing that a several-years-long bout of depression will teach you, it’s that you need to change. Like RIGHT NOW. I’m stepping far outside of my comfort zone because I know that this is where the real growth happens. I am doing this because I am terrified. I want to be my best self. Instead of fear and self-loathing, I am excited about this opportunity. This privilege, really.
And the reward? The joy of being able to care for myself and my family as I see fit; to buck the scarcity model I’ve been taught; to get to know my community better and make connections; to decolonize my mind a little bit more and leave the shame by the back door.
And I will have a reliable car that I like.
If you want to trade with me, hit me up! Also, feel free to follow me if you find my words or my projects interesting. And like this post! I don’t get paid, but it boosts my ego a bit.
