A Glitch in the Privilege

Nancy Daley
Crow’s Feet
Published in
3 min readJan 9, 2023

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Fear & empathy hand-in-hand.

What most of my life looks like. (Author’s photo)

So, my spouse is at the doctor this morning for some tests related to his recent heart problems (A-fib). He texted from the office to say they could not find him in the Blue Cross Book of People.

This was enough to get my heart started on a Monday morning; I’ll be lucky if I don’t go into A-fib and need to be paddled back into good rhythm. (Sounds like my Catholic elementary school, where the principal’s office was said to have a spanking machine.)

So it came to pass that I had a brief taste of no insurance coverage — for someone who mountain bikes on very rough terrain and knows first-hand how long it takes to get to the ER by helicopter. And who now has a temperamental ticker.

My hands are still sweating.

Poverty and lack of privilege are stressful enough to kill anybody. If you need data on this topic, look them up. This is info that would show up in the noshitsherlock subreddit. I can still remember walking out of a store because I didn’t have the price of a quart of milk (thirty-seven cents), and there are decades of highly improved finances between that episode and my present life.

Poverty sucks. It likes to walk around with you all day, humiliating you as frequently as possible. Then it goes to bed with you and hauls you up out of sleep…

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Nancy Daley
Crow’s Feet

Artist, food-worshipper, grouch, retired psychologist and uni lecturer (Human Sexuality). Currently running for Queen of the Universe.