Do you ever wonder why you do the things you do? Don't worry, plenty of people out there are doing it for you.
For reasons better avoided, our home is in the national spotlight. But no matter how bright they shine that thing, certain people can't figure out what's up with those hillbillies. We elude them.
You've got the type who are blaming us because everyone remembers how ruthless hillbillies from east Kentucky and southern West Virginia forced the robber barons to fuel the industrial revolution with Appalachian coal instead of whale oil. Clearly our fault.
You've got the type who feel sorry for us because we're simple people who just live off the land and EBT cards. If we could only get broadband to the hollers all would be okay.
And you've got the type who just really want to help so they put three cases of bottled water in three separate cardboard boxes and UPS them to Flood Victims. Do you think I'm making this up?
Thank god for social media so they can identify themselves for future reference.
Even people who should know better can't help stepping on their bow ties. The day after, a cartoon in the Lexington Herald-Leader showed two victims sitting on a flooded house with a caption that read "When it rains it pours on poor people."
The publisher of the paper was astonished that many in the disaster area were offended by their "lament" for the people of eastern Kentucky. Why would we take offense?
Because anyone who has driven up and down Elkhorn Creek the last three weeks, or any of a dozen other communities in the area, knows that flood didn't check anybody's bank account before rolling through their house. It didn't check to see if the car it carried down the creek was paid for or about to be repossessed.
It didn't check anybody's credit rating before drowning them like a rag doll.
What the Herald-Leader should know is people don't want to be called poor. People with money don't want to be called poor. People without money don't want to be called poor. Poor is a poor way to describe anyone.
Please don't contend only poor people were hurt by this disaster. Losing everything takes the same mental toll no matter how much it was. We all were affected by this disaster.
A lot of it boils down to the question "why". It's what they don't understand. Why do we do this, why do we do that? Why do we live there?
It must be because we can't afford to live somewhere else. Because we don't have the education to live somewhere else. Because we don't have the desire.
It must be because we're poor.
Thirty nine people died in that flood. Any other place it would have been hundreds. But neighbors and strangers came to one another's aid and saved lives. Three weeks later, neighbors continue to sustain and support one another.
That sounds like a rich place to me. When I think of those on the outside wondering why we do the things we do, I have just one thought.
Those poor people.