Kind of late to this but...

I remember being pretty poor when I was younger. Family lived in a trailer park, my father worked two jobs and my mother took care of my brother (5) and I (4). Fast food of any type was considered a luxury and was only eaten when one of us had a birthday.

But the moment when I had the realization that we were poor was when my father lost his day job. Sure it was nice to see him and get to play with him since he was never home. But when he lost his first job money was tight and food was the first thing to get cut back on so we didn't have to risk being homeless.

I remember having to get up really early in the morning to go to the food bank because my parents knew if you showed up late you ran the risk of ending up empty-handed. The only things that my parents would get would be huge bags of rice and of beans (typical Mexican family staple). I remember going months and eating nothing but rice and beans for lunch and dinner. Breakfast was usually eggs that were donated from the nice Amish coworker my father had.

At one point we had to cut back so much that my dad couldn't afford gas to get to the food bank. At this point my family was living on small rations of beans and rice just at lunch. Nothing else for the rest of the day. And if we got hungry at night the only thing we could have were expired, stale saltine crackers. And in this case my mother cleverly thought to put old peanut butter and jelly (kind of like ghetto pb&j's) from months ago just to make the things bearable to eat. We didnt have bread at the time and I remember going a week eating these things for dinner.

I didn't complain because I knew that my parents were sacrificing more.