Poor aren’t allowed to forget it

Here’s a statement we’re not likely to hear much in the future:

“We were poor, but we didn’t know it.”

This is usually spoken by someone of a certain age who grew up in the ‘30s or ‘40s. I doubt any generation after theirs will have the luxury of such protective ignorance of financial reality.

It’s an exaggeration, to be sure. They knew they were poor. They knew why Wednesday was spaghetti night, and even the youngest children sensed their parents’ relief on payday. They knew that somewhere there were “swells” who wore fancy clothes and drove fancy cars – they knew because they saw them, now and then, in the movies.

What they meant was they knew they weren’t rich, but they thought they were normal. Since nearly all of their neighbors were in the same boat, it didn’t occur to them that this constituted poverty. “Poor” was reserved for the kid who pretended he didn’t need a coat once fall turned into winter.

To put yourself in this world, you need think only of the set of “The Honeymooners.” It had a table, some chairs, and maybe a toaster and an ironing board. That was it. Would they have called themselves poor? Probably not.

Now, however, they’d know they were poor. It would be thrown in their faces every day, in ways unimaginable just a generation ago.

Trixie and Alice would be ripe for the show “What Not to Wear,” with wardrobe experts throwing all those shirtwaist dresses into the nearest trash can.

Their apartment? In desperate need of an “Extreme Makeover,” with the sparse decor – right down to the checkered tablecloth – being replaced by all new furnishings from the advertising sponsor.

Ralph and Ed, meanwhile, would watch in consternation as their apartments went co-op. They’d then be bamboozled into taking out a subprime loan, having been convinced they could flip their homes and get rich quick.

But it would hardly be very funny, would it? Watch their wacky high jinks as Ralph tries to repair Ed’s credit rating!! Watch Norton sweat when visited by the foreclosure agent from the mortgage company!! Not much room for comedy there, eh?

A sewer worker and a bus driver? There may still be TV shows written about such workers – but we bet they’d somehow manage to live in nice homes and wear the latest fashions.

Their kids would still manage to walk around carrying several hundred dollars’ worth of mandatory toys (cell phone, mP3 player and digital camera) with no explanation of how they could afford it.

And what of those who truly can’t afford all this? They must be made to feel like the odd man out – mystified as to how everyone else pulls it off. (The answer, of course, is credit cards.)

Doing without requires far more discipline than it did back then, we suspect. People could grow up not knowing they were poor because they weren’t bombarded by advertisements on everything from banana peels to pizza delivery boxes to grocery carts.

Back when people didn’t know they were poor, rich was portrayed as really rich, and poor was held out as reasonably normal. Now rich is depicted as normal, and a kid could be forgiven for thinking that every parent can spend $150,000 on a Sweet 16 party.

And poor? If you’re poor today, oh, you know it. And you’re never allowed to forget it.