M told me one evening this week that she is sometimes brave. She had baked two loaves of two different, new kinds of bread, both of which she planned to take along with us when we would go visiting later.
“I often regret trying a recipe on other people,” she said, “but I’m doing it again anyway.”
“If I were a demanding sort of husband,” I told her, “I might insist that you not practice such generosity without first testing the goods on me. But I’m not demanding, so you just do whatever you want.”
A bit later, I heard her say that she suspected that the loaves had perhaps been under baked. We had an early evening bedtime snack that both confirmed her suspicions and stimulated my sweet tooth mentality.
Such fortifications by us for the greater good are not only tucked into our little bellies. M and I have shared our contributory spirit beyond ourselves and indeed have sped up the world’s economic recovery as best we can–by borrowing a butt load of money and giving it all to a family we don’t even really know and who are planning to spend all of it on new house construction over the next few months.
You could call it a privately financed (by us) stimulus package (never mind that the recipients of the money gave us their current primary residence in return).
But as pleased with ourselves as we are for contributing to our dear nation’s fiscal survival, we know in our inner beings that there remains much more we yet can do, and I hereby–totally altruistically–offer us as Ideal Stimulusees.
See, in this economic downturn, not spending money–or at least saving it under a mattress instead of investing it in stocks–promises only to perpetuate the downward spiral of worry, unemployment, personal rejection of spendthrift habits, no tax revenue, no jobs for government workers…you’ve already gotten the picture, no doubt.
Money needs to flow–and it needs to flow through people like us. As I am a member of an only moderately lucrative profession, our few monetary resources and the possibility of an upcoming salary cut make us the Perfect Recipients of stimulus. The current shallowness of our bank account ensures that any money we receive will be spent very quickly, and not on flashiness but on things for our new home that will increase our energy efficiency and conservation as well as domestic food production.
Deep down, and primarily out of concern for others (well, mostly each other), M and I really, really, really want to contribute.
So bring on the stimulus!
I met my 
It’s interesting, considering the worth of a person in monetary terms–difficult, rather. In a study of coincidental investigation yesterday I stacked some of N’s blocks to say the word “hard.” When I pivoted the pile of letters, they spelled “uneq.” It must be difficult for employers, these days, having to lay off extra workers, each and every one unique but nonetheless expendable. In my school district, the average money saved when an employee leaves is $52,000. I might be worth more as a layoff option than investment portfolio.
Assigning worth to people is often a misguided venture not just when it comes to their personal monetary holdings. I recently received an email forward subjected “OBAMA HAS TO BE STOPPED.” It sounded dangerously close to personalizing national issues beyond an intelligently debatable point, so I didn’t read the email (since I do only things involving intelligence). Besides, could Obama really be The Problem? As a former fellow congregant once insisted, it’s Congress–not the president–about whom we need to talk, since Congress controls the purse strings.
