Let me make this abundantly clear:  children do not deserve to suffer.  Not for any reason.  I don’t mean your kid goes without an iPhone while “everyone” has one.  I mean legitimate suffering.  Like stuff that makes other people cry when they hear about it.  You hear about a child with cancer?  Yep, instant waterworks.  Let’s establish that I mean real suffering.

When DeVos recently joked about students receiving free and reduced lunches, I was so deeply saddened, and also angry.  When I was younger, I was on the free and reduced lunch program at my public school.

See, my father is deaf.  Born deaf, always been deaf, even with his hearing aids.  He now has a Cochlear implant, but it really isn’t working any miracles.  He’s super smart, too.  My dad is a mechanical engineer, and has designed some really impressive stuff.  Every place he’s ever worked (as far as my memory reaches), he’s been looked down upon and taken advantage of because of his disability (read: crap pay).  He’s always struggled to provide for his family, even with a bachelor degree and working in his field of expertise.  This led to my mother also needing to work to support the family – again, a college degree, credentials, working in her field of expertise.  She’s been working for the same guy for 29 years!  At times, my mom was the breadwinner and Dad worked part time, or vice versa.  They’ve always done what it took to provide for us.

Then came the twins.  These two messed everything up. Mom and Dad could afford one more kiddo… not two.  But the thing is, you gotta keep both.  Go figure.  Mom and Dad’s work schedules had to adapt to having two newborns at home, myself in 2nd grade, and another in kindergarten.  This meant that collectively, fewer hours could be worked.  Ultimately, my parents signed up for the WIC program to begin receiving benefits to support our family.  If you’re unfamiliar with WIC, it provides food and nutritional benefits to children aged four and under.  This meant Mom could receive specific food items that only applied to the category that the twins fell under – us older two were too old for the program, so benefits would not apply to us.  It applied to items like milk, bread, peanut butter, bricks of cheese (but none of that fancy sliced stuff), eggs, et cetera.  REAL FOOD, not Doritos and Oreos.

Because we were in the income demographic that qualified for WIC, my younger sister and myself qualified for free and reduced lunch at school.  Do you have ANY IDEA how terribly embarrassing it is to get to the cash register at the end of the line and tell the lunch lady to look you up on the list because you only owed $0.40?  It was bad enough that we had the visual cues of the poor kids – no trendy backpacks, my clothes were worn-out hand-me-downs from my cousin in New York, I never had name brand shoes, my folders were solid colors without any designs on them.  Now I had to open my mouth and say loud enough for someone to hear me -including the kid behind me in line- that I’m a poor kid.

Now, I’ve heard this argument.  A crappy one, but let’s pretend for a minute.  “If you can’t afford kids, you shouldn’t have them.”  I believe that it is fiscally irresponsible to bring a child into this world that you’re unable to provide for.  In this scenario… my parents weren’t trying to double the number of kids in their household, but they had to make do.  So they did.  But let’s just continue to pretend; we’re all creative people here.  Do you REALLY want that child to go without?  You believe the parents made an irresponsible decision, so you’d rather have that child go hungry?  Do you know how many children don’t have food at home?  Do you know who eats as much as they can on Friday lunch because it’s the last meal they’ll have until they get to school again on Monday?  And you want to punish that child because you think the parents are irresponsible?

The National School Lunch program definitely needs tweaking.  If I were a student on the reduced program today, I’d still be paying $0.40 for my lunch, twenty years later.  But taking away these meals from children, I mean KIDS, SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, FIVE YEARS OLD, GUYS, seems pretty ruthless.

Please don’t make a joke of these students.  I swear to you, they’ve been through enough.  Let them eat.  I’m sure we can find another place to cut taxes that doesn’t affect the health and welfare of children.