Unity

25. The 'B4' Variant & The Freak-Out Factor

CHAPTER 25: THE 'B4' VARIANT & THE FREAK-OUT FACTOR

We had selected the best nominations for the best do-gooders. I use that term – do-gooders – with sincere respect. These were people who definitely did good. And it was so difficult to pick only a few.

The stories were heartbreaking, or thrilling, or entertaining – they all were human. Waitresses, taxi drivers, small business owners of every type. These were the most common professions in the nomination list.

There also were many stay-at-home moms, or women who didn't make a lot of money in their careers because they also managed their families.

There was one single dad who really stood out to us. He walked from his home to work at a factory just outside Akron, Ohio. Public transportation in that part of the state had been shut down with the lock downs, but his factory was still open. It was retrofitted to make tests for The Virus.

He was almost never home. He worked an eight-hour shift, and it took more than two hours to walk to work, each way.

"Dad would never complain," his 16-year-old son wrote. "But I see how his feet and back hurt. He's an old guy – already almost 50."

The teen and his younger brothers, 10 and 5 years old, signed the nomination with a postscript. "P.S.," the teen wrote, "Our mom died of a drug overdose two years ago and dad has been walking to work ever since."

We bought the hard-working dad, Reggie, an SUV. And we gave him a pre-paid gas card and more than enough cash for registration and insurance.

When you are poor enough that you have to walk to work for nearly 2.5 hours in every type of weather, and you are responsible enough to keep doing it, we thought that was worthy of some help. He was doing it for his children.

As more time went on in Year One of the Virus, and we read more nominations, I better understood what Brian had said on my couch about wealth versus cash in your pocket. Everyone knows the difference – but I began to see how it would be difficult to accumulate any type of material wealth when you had to burn through the cash to survive.

I had never had to experience that. In that way, I was part of the privileged upper middle class in America, within striking distance of utter affluence when compared to the poor, good people asking Unity for financial help. But here I was, witnessing it. Their struggles may not have been my own – but they hurt me somewhere deep down nonetheless.

For the first time in my adult life, I felt like the American Dream was really a Lie. If people started out poor, they were less likely to get ahead – less likely to become wealthy, less likely to climb to the upper or upper middle class. If you can't feed your kids, or pay the rent, you aren't going to be saving money for retirement.

I simply had never thought about this before the Virus and Unity.

Sure, I had traveled around the world enough to see crushing poverty. But in my own country, I'd been ignorant. And, as an advertising executive out to make you part with your money so I could earn a good living, I glossed over the consequences of my industry's practices.

Nearly every recipient was working class. Very few made it 'big' – like Efrem, whose Mexican immigrant parents set him up for success in Silicon Valley. The well-to-do recipients, like Efrem, didn't get the Unity award for themselves. It was always for a group or charity for which they worked.

But the majority of recipients were people who might be called 'poor schleps' by the callous wealthy.

My own life had been far more privileged than most. I'd been able to pay for college, although it was a struggle. I didn't want to marry and have kids right away. I wanted to see what the world had to offer. I wasn't even sure I wanted kids.