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Think you have it rough? ‘Winners’ of contest tell us their money troubles
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The Toronto Star-
Jim Coyle
It sounded, at first blush, like a lonesome, twangy, double-bourbon country-and-western hit in the making.
“How Screwed Are You?” asked the Ontario Public Service Employees Union’s online contest.
And the entries — “I’m so screwed that . . .” — just kept on coming. And coming.
“I am so screwed that I can tell you the month and year that I last ate at a restaurant where the chairs weren’t attached to the table.”
They kept coming in snappy one-liners, in long personal essays of desperation, in accounts of empty purses and impoverished spirits.
There were more than 1,200 entries in all. And, in a bid for one of three cash prizes presented on the weekend by OPSEU president Smoky Thomas, those entries ranged from angry to despairing to heart-scaldingly sad.
Craig Hadley took one of the three $2,400 prizes with his entry: “I am so screwed that I’ll still be paying off my student debt with Old Age Security cheques.”
Tania Bugnet won with: “I am so screwed that my husband’s idea of a vacation is taking a day off from one of his four jobs!”
Ron Kelly made the podium with: “I am so screwed that I need a full-time job to afford tuition so I can go to school to get a full-time job”
As the American author Joseph Heller might have said, Catch-22.
Hadley, an Etobicoke resident who works for the LCBO, said the response reflects the fact that “the majority of Canadians can really relate to being screwed.”
“Essentially winning these days is just breaking even.”
Though employed now, Hadley slept four hours a day while working full-time to put himself through school and entered because he doesn’t want his son to go through the same thing.
Anyone wondering what motivates the Occupy movement that for weeks has dominated newscasts might look no farther than the collective anxiety attack given voice in “How Screwed Are You?”
Even the chance to vent was greeted with gratitude.
“Thank you for this lovely opportunity!” said a mother on disability insurance with no money for fall and winter clothes for her two children.
Entries that spoke of the impact of need on relationships and self-esteem were especially evocative.
“I am so screwed that I lie to my girlfriend about how much I make so I don’t have to admit I earn minimum wage with a university degree.”
“I am so screwed that my kids forget what it’s like to see me smile.”
“I am so screwed that my daughter offered to pay for her own school trip. $6.”
“I am so screwed that I spend my days travelling the TTC for company.”
As Randy Robinson, OPSEU’s political economist, observed, some of the entries were shocking because, in order to come up with them, someone must have at least considered acts of quiet desperation.
As in, “I’m so screwed that after I boiled hot dogs for the kids, I gave them the hot dog water.”
And as strained and stressful a situation as many entries described, there was still the dark warning that things could get worse.
“I am so screwed that when I see people who enter this contest and cite a house, mortgage, RRSP, car or vacation, I laugh, because they don’t know what screwed is.”
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