I remember there was a span of years in high school where nothing made me feel cooler than sitting in the back of something. The back of the school bus. The top-back corner of the bleachers. The backseat of cars with boys. The back of movie theaters (also with boys).
One night my crew went to see some movie or another. This was during that time when what movie I saw didn’t really matter because I was basically there to make out in the dark for several uninterrupted hours away from parental supervision. This was also right around the same time when some marketing genius decided it’d be a good idea to send a movie theater employee into the theatre right before the screening to try to sell the audience more shit. Friday nights at the movies can get rowdy and basically no one is trying to shell out even more money for the overpriced goodies from the lobby. Just start the movie already.
This was an incredibly miserable position for the movie theater employee to be in. And that night, I made it worse.
I was all hyped up on what was probably an obnoxious amount of Vanilla Coke. I had discovered that basically every other Vanilla Coke cap at Blockbuster was a winner for a free Coke and I would rack up like 10 at a time. Perhaps it was the hormones, or that cool high, or the fact I had a sizable audience, but I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted down at the employee, “your job sucks!” My friends immediately shunned me for this act of sheer jackassery. Apparently, I’d reached even the average teenager’s tolerance for shitty behavior. Overcome with guilt, I bounded down the stairs to apologize.
This girl was like two-seconds from tears. She was not going to let me off easy. She took off her visor, lifted her thick, cheap, metal-framed glasses and rubbed at her eye. She was a few years older than me. She didn’t wear makeup and had her dull hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked like someone who’d endured years of bullying.
“I know my job sucks,” she said. She explained that she had to work that suck-ass job because she had a lot of health issues and was on a lot of medications her family couldn’t afford. She barely made more than minimum wage and everything in her life was a hardship. She thanked me for my apology. I stood there feeling stupid and humbled. I told her I hoped she found a better-paying job soon.
My dad’s a veteran and my mom’s a postal employee. We didn’t always have the best health insurance when I was growing up, but we had it. And when I needed braces, otherwise I’d have to suffer through life with totally jacked teeth, my Dad made $5,000 worth of payments for me to have a perfect smile. I didn’t know shit about that girl from the movie theater’s struggle. And while I immediately regretted my behavior, it wasn’t until I became a full-time freelance writer that I could even somewhat relate to her.
Right before I quit my job last year, I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t because everything felt so uncertain heading into a Trump presidency. I reasoned I would still be able to get Obamacare for one year, so I went for it. I spent most of the fall and summer fretting over the state of healthcare in this country while Republicans worked over time to take my insurance away. Now, it’s been revealed they’ve written stipulations into their rickety tax reform bill they’re close to passing that will decimate Obamacare. It’s endlessly frustrating knowing that I’ve worked hard all year to build up my own business, but if healthcare goes away, I’ll have to return to that 9-to-5 life to get benefits. Like the movie theater girl, I’ll have to work an unfulfilling job to manage my health.
I can’t go without health insurance. I’m in my early 30s, but over this last year I had a lot of wonky health issues that required seeing specialists and getting a variety of blood work and ultrasounds done that had nothing to do with a fetus in my uterus. The hundreds of dollars I paid, could have easily bloomed to tens of thousands of dollars without health insurance. Even if the state of things doesn’t change for the worse, my health insurance premiums will still be my number one expense as someone who is self-employed. My health insurance isn’t even that great. It’s just better than nothing. For 2018, I had to choose a plan with even less benefits because monthly premiums for my previous plan jumped $100 to $380. And who the fuck knows what I’ll do if I have pay out of pocket on my medical expenses to hit that $7,500 deductible. That’s a lot of damn avocado toast or homes/cars/diamond rings millennials aren’t buying.
Here’s hoping that 2018 is as unpredictable as 2017 was, but in a good way. A year where healthcare, human rights and basic human decency make a comeback.