The Latte F-f-f-actor

A guy figured out that a millennial enjoying a $4 latte each day should invest the money instead so that 45 years from now $4 a day plus interest would amount to half a million dollars she could use to support herself in her old age. From this he developed a popular trademarked book and calculator called "The Latte Factor."

I've seen this argument also with a millennial buying and enjoying a fruit-vegetable smoothie.

Sure, "little things add up," but, did you know, fella:

• That millennial with her indulgent whipped cream mocha latte or smoothie in early afternoon might not have eaten all day. She lives with roommates (unlike Mr. Latte Factor) and one terrorizes her so she flees her dwelling and cannot cook breakfast or fix a lunch because said roommate steals or eats her food or smears it on the floor or screams when she uses the kitchen calling her a fat pig, and for some reason (like, she lives at home and the sicko is her mother or brother or nephew and half her salary goes for room and board) can't move out.
• That millennial is insomniac or severely depressed and by having coffee midday is trying to have a second start to her day to see if it will start any better.
• That millennial owes thousands in student loans, has a crummy job and boss, is the only single left among her friends, and without the daily latte there is nothing to live for.
• That millennial grew up poor and graduated from the public school system and has no idea what an investment is.
• She and her co-workers pooled what money they had and drew straws to see which one of them could have lunch that day, and she won enough for a latte and scone at the nearby coffee shop because any farther away from work and she might get sacked for coming back late. (There is a reason those scones are 700 calories apiece. They are the only food some people get all day.)

Wish I could locate another such study: A psychologist watched amazed as people waited in a long line at the bank for their entire lunch hour trying to cash their weekly paychecks, instead of eating lunch as the psychologist thought they should. Dear amazed psychologist: Until they cashed their checks they couldn't buy any lunch. Maybe their nicely bagged and frugal lunch was at their work station. Even so, the banks open at nine and close at five when these people are working, and the lunch hour is the only window of time they had.

How I Coped

On May 14 all is peachy. On May 15, Mom, 83, is diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer. The next day I'm paralyzed on my back like a cockroach with my first pinched nerve and the worst pain I've ever borne. I text my neighbor who takes me to urgent care and wheels me in. She lent me two canes for almost a week so I could walk. I couldn't sit up long enough to do enough work and lost a week's income and am forbidden to exercise for three months, or lift anything, exercise being my major way of coping.

Then Mom's prognosis goes from 6 months to 6 weeks. Two sisters fly alternately to my parents in Phoenix to help out, and my stepdad's panic (he's 98; Mom was his caretaker) infects them; of course both parents refused to make any plans for such as this, and suddenly chaos like it's the last act of Ubu Roi.

Then a dear friend tells me she's moving to California; a dear friend with a health problem believed we were sitting in London. My steady date, so wonderful, suddenly ghosts me for a week, and on day 8 after I text "Are you all right" comes the "I'm sorry, didn't want to hurt you" email and enter a fresh hell of shock and anguish.

Meanwhile ulcer acts up (duh) and I lose 8 pounds in two weeks because food is repulsive except for coffee; it's my turn to go to Phoenix with 121 degrees predicted and the sister with power of attorney won't call a home health aide while my stepdad and his neighbor are screaming into the phone that they can't lift Mom by themselves anymore and I don't dare say I can't lift anyone because that'll really make 'em mad. It's finals week. Lose pair of specs it costs $400 to replace. Cellphone fritzes. Medical, travel and tax bills hit just as I retire from 31 years of adjunct teaching and lose that income stream.

How I coped: Without my neighbor's help and kindness I'd still be lying here, and she took me out for pizza which I wanted to eat. Chiropractic treatments cut the pain. Lay on my back all day and kept working until I was strong enough to drive. Prayer. Tried to write poems. Saw and hugged as many friends as possible. As my sporting outlet I went target shooting, blowing hundreds of bullets .22 and .38 with admirable accuracy. Spent hours composing furious emails to the date which I erased without sending because a horoscope told me not to. At exit interview with the apologetic mansplainer I requested compensation and gave him a four-figure figure and he paid it directly into my Paypal account. I told him to leave women alone, that he should just stay home and choke his chicken. He did not know what "choke your chicken" meant and I had to tell him.

Ask and Y'all Shall Receive

I dared myself to attend a "Laughter Yoga" class and became a regular. Our weekly games, exercises, stretches, and meditation are led by a trained leader who knows all the medical reasons why laughter is good for health. "Laughter Yoga" chapters exist worldwide.

We meet Mondays. During guided meditation we are asked to thank the universe for all we have and make one request. Normally I want for nothing, but this time I asked for $300 (heating bills larger than expected). In Wednesday's mail came an unusually early birthday gift from my mother, an unusually generous $300 check, and also -- the cherry on top! -- a letter forgiving a $50 parking ticket I and a dozen others received while attending a special event. We had been told where to park so as not to be ticketed; we did so and all got tickets anyway, and worse, a bill in the mail after we'd complained. As of Wednesday all our tickets were forgiven.

With the day's mail in hand I laughed and laughed, especially at the extra $50.

This had to be the 50th or 100th time in life I've received deliverance on request, of all kinds from all sorts of sources, and it can't be mere 21st-century New Age magickal claptrap. I learned some time ago that "Amen" means "So be it" and yesterday that one possible source of the word "Abracadabra" is the Aramaic phrase avra kehdabra, meaning “I will create as I speak."

Recession Chic

Sunday, Hawkeye invited about 20 womenfolk to her house telling them to bring all the clothes and accessories they don't wear. We put the resulting tons of clothes on racks and tables in all five of her upstairs rooms and everyone picked out and tried on what they wanted and took home what they liked; the remainder to charity. We all got new things and no one spent a cent. Try this with your friends. The more women, the more sizes there will be to choose from, so encourage all your Lillian Russells along with your Skinny Minnies, and serve margaritas and Oreos and whoop up the hen party. As part of my haul, I got a pink T-shirt, brand-new, with hummingbirds on it. It doesn't get any better than that.

Times of the Signs, Part 2: Ruma, IL

Took this through the glass of an abandoned shop that apparently sold hardware/car parts and things.

Times of the Signs, Part 1: Allenton, Mo.

Midwestern First-Date Advice

A third drink before dinner shows a lack of respect for oneself AND one's date. At such piggish behavior, put $10 on the table and leave.

Men, don’t wear sandals. Midwestern men have notoriously scary feet.

Men, dive for the check and refuse to let the woman pay. Since you’ve just met, the woman has no other way of telling whether you valued her time and company. (No Midwesternista is a feminist on the first date.)

Women, carry enough cash to pay the check in case he “forgot his wallet.”

Don't wrap up the catfish bones to take home to your cats.

There’s no turnoff like a dinner date who explains that he can’t walk very well right now because a thousand-pound hay bale fell on him.

Women, cleavage shouldn’t look like tonnage.

Something bigger than a breadbox in a car’s back seat – a cooler, pet carrier, cardboard file-boxes, child seat, tools, fishing gear -- shows that there's something in your date’s life that’s far more important than you’ll ever be.

Panic at the Pumps

Ike blew through Texas and then wet us here in Missouri with 5.5 inches of rain in just a couple of hours. Right before Ike arrived, neighbor Shelley stops by on her way in and tells me, There isn't any gas left in town. I said, say what? She said, all the gas stations have sold out their gasoline; I just come from there.

Thinking of the 24 pumps at the QuikTrip and 12 at the Shell, I expressed disbelief.

You know what it is, Shelley said, people out here have all these trucks with double tanks and SUVs and whatnot, and everybody heard gas was going to $5 a gallon cuz of Ike hittin' the refineries. I said, People acting crazy. No need to panic like that. Everybody is listening to too much TV.

So then it rained buckets. My phone and electricity went out. Finally I get to turn on the TV and the whole world had gone irrational. The worst local flash-flooding wasn't here but in the big city, where it never floods. Two people drowned trying to save their cars and others are scraping mud out of their restaurants & that. Then national news says a huge Wall-Street financial concern employing all sorts of financiers & accountants has gone bankrupt. And then a certain President comes on TV and says to stay calm and sit tight because everything will be fine. Then I saw commercials for and against Obama and McCain, with both of them acting crazy, and showing their faces in profile and talkin' down to us like we were irrational or at least morons, and I wondered if this U.S.A. is turning into a Third World country or what.

Why I Hide from Salvation Army Bell-Ringers

They're out in front of the grocery store, the Wal-Mart, the K-Mart; they're on the streetcorners downtown, uptown. . . And I will turn around and abjure the groceries or whatever I need, and go home, and return at an odd hour when the Salvation Army charity-bucket bell-ringers are sure not to be there. Or I won't return at all.

I'm not the only one that cringes upon hearing the unceasing dink-dink-dink-dink that starts in November and lasts into January. At a supermarket that had two entrances rather far apart I saw most customers avoid the entrance where the bell-ringer stood, and enter and exit the other. The bell-ringer picked up his red bucket and moved to that entrance, trying to nab the sneaky shoppers -- who again escaped him, through the other door.

I suppose many of us enjoy giving to charities, especially good and noble ones such as the Salvation Army. But I am tired of being begged for money, to give more and more of it, when I have less and less of it. In fact I am falling behind, being forced to pay $3/gallon for gasoline, $365 a year to park in my own employer's lot, $700 for a tank of propane, $500 deductible when a carefree trucker let debris fly off his trailer, smashing my car's front end; $25 for a haircut so that my students won't say, "Did you know your hair is a half-inch longer on one side than the other?" (I tend not to look that closely at myself, but students see everything, including cheap clothes and assembly-line haircuts.) Our employer even volunteers to deduct from our paychecks funds for those less fortunate, via The United Way, and plants a United Way rep right in our office to guilt us into giving.

I resist where I can. Rarely, I salve my conscience by dropping into the bucket a quarter or a buck. Or if I pass the bell-ringer as I enter, I might promise, "I'll give when I come back out." And then I'll sneak back out, if possible. Either way the ringer -- poor brave shivering fellow -- says "God bless you."

I'm blessed in countless ways, including the fact that I don't have to take charity myself. But I need to be blessed with more money so I'd feel glad to give -- instead of shamed because I can't.