Dave Eggers, (editor) �The Best American Nonrequired Reading � 2002�
This is part two of an eleven-part story about Kaua�i, which begins here. Part six of the story is here. The rest, you�ll have to find on your own.
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What I didn�t mention in that last post is despite the fact that I never sleep before I go anywhere, figuring I can sleep on the way, I never manage to do it. So after my father picked me up, and after we went to a few stores to buy food (which we abandoned, but will be explained why in a moment), all I wanted to do was go to bed.
Whenever people hear that my father lives in Hawaii, they want to know what he does. I understand the questioning; after all, if it�s something that is easy to do, then mayhap they can do it as well. But nobody wants to believe my answer. See, my father was a marriage counselor until he got divorced. After that, he decided he didn�t want to listen to people�s problems, and more specific, he didn�t want to work. So he upped and left, retiring at 42 years of age.
Sounds like a good idea, yeah? Well, I also lived with him sporadically at these times, and it�s definitely not for everyone. I know I couldn�t do it. He survived for 20 years by living as cheap as he could be. As an example, one of his rationales dealt with not buying yogurt at $3.99 a pint, when if you waited two weeks, you could buy it at $1.50, provided you were willing to scoop away the mold that had formed on the edges.
One of my most vivid memories from Hawaii dealt with a stray peacock roaming the streets, bleating for chick peacocks to interact with. Annoyed at being woken by this bird, I hucked a penny at him so that he might look elsewhere.
�That�s a waste of money,� my dad said when he saw me throw my penny.
Things were very slim for my father for a while as he budgeted his finances down to less than $300 a month for over fifteen years. Then he hit social security age. At that point, it was like he won the lottery, and indeed, he passed his money around like it would expire the next day when I arrived (which it might have � he has a drawer full of checks that will expire if he doesn�t use them).
Along with the Social Security checks, he also gets food stamps, although in Hawaii they issue you a credit card, thereby eliminating any kind of stigma. He told me to pick out food that I liked, and I was the kind of food stamp patron that the republicans like to dramatize, picking up steaks and ribs and Bloody Mary mix all on Uncle Sam�s tab.
But then after collecting everything we found the credit cards weren�t working, so I put everything back before going to bed on a couch that most self-respecting punk rockers would have thrown out years before.
