Rent

I make my rounds every day.
But at the beginning of every month, I'm particularly busy.
While I don't collect rent from many of my tenants, I still drive them around to take care of their errands or settle their disputes or just to visit.

This month kind of threw me off because of the digital switchover, and then it's postponement.
After connecting a lot of those little black boxes, scanning the channels and showing my tenants how they're used - Congress announced that the switch to digital won't take place until June.
What, wasn't four years enough notice to give people?
I know, an estimated six million people didn't have their boxes, but four years should be enough time to prepare.
My tenants aren't just ghetto, but "Country Ghetto" (their words).
If these people had enough sense and time to get a box, everyone should have.

The most interesting daily visit is to an old blind lady.
Every night, I make sure she has her dinner, has taken her bath, I sit and visit and then put her eye drops in.
Tonight we watched (listened to) the Temptations movie on ION.
She asked me if it was Black History Month. "yes Ma'am", I replied.
She then spoke about the times in which she grew up.
Her great-grandson asked about Segregation.
I asked if she remembers having to sit in the back of the bus or outside of a restaurant or on the Black side of a movie theater.
"Nope", she says, "We were too poor to do any of that".
I thought she was joking, but she was dead serious.
Too poor for Segregation?

But the rounds have gotten old.
Every month I think things will be better the next.
Every month, things are still the same.
Everyone I know needs something from me every time they see me.
I thought that I could quit after a decade - but no one seems to have changed.
In fact, I think they may be even more dependent on me.
I think I may have added another level of dependency to their lives.
Maybe the Bible was right when it said that we would always have the poor with us.
But I can't seem to communicate that it doesn't have to be them.