Dear Mitt Romney,
I grew up with an outhouse and no running water.
I know that this is beyond your comprehension, as I’m quite sure
you don’t believe such a thing exists in the United States, but I assure
you it is true; in fact, a great many of my neighbors also had
outhouses.
(Ours was one of the less nicely constructed, I’m afraid).
My culture of dependency started early; I attended Headstart, and
thus I was brainwashed, from the age of 4 , to believe that the
government owed me something. I grew up on Foodstamps. I used to cringe
when my mother pulled out those booklets at the
grocery store; sometimes I wandered away and pretended she wasn’t my
mother because I was so ashamed of her lack of personal responsibility.
I ate school breakfasts and school lunches, partaking twice of
the undeserved largess so unjustly provided by those more responsible in
this country.
Somehow, despite being a recipient of those entitlements, and
despite being raised by parents utterly without personal responsibility
as is clear by the unforgiveable behavior of partaking of entitlements, I
managed to do exceptionally well in school.
And yet my culture of dependency continued; I went off to college only
because of student loans and Pell Grants, sucking yet again on the teat
of the Responsible America, those who grew up with flushing toilets and
cashing paychecks and eating lunches made
by their responsible mothers. I went on to graduate school; more loans, more dependency.
In fact, when I take stock, having been motivated by your
illuminating remarks, I note that I have partaken of almost every
entitlement available to an American.
I am still an American, aren’t I?
At this point I’m not sure I qualify.
I just want you to know that I repent.
I repent that I have earned three college degrees; I repent that I
have failed to do it on my own; I repent that I now pay more of a
percentage of my income on my taxes than you do, when I have clearly had
so much undeserved entitlements that I should
put some real skin in the game, 50% of my income, let’s say.
Of course, 50% of my income is what my tax advisor tells me I will pay in taxes out of my book advance.
So maybe I will finally begin to pay back my unfair opportunities to eat, learn, and thrive in this country.
Maybe then I’ll finally learn some personal responsibility.
Goldberry Long
Goldberry Long was born in New Mexico, attended the Iowa
Writers' Workshop and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her
novel, Juniper Tree Burning, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2001, and
her next novel, The Kingdom of No, is forthcoming from S&S. She
admits to being an excessively slow writer, but this letter came out very
quickly.
