Do you think twice about getting a $5 mocha frap?

Had a very interesting chinese dinner with a friend from Croatia today and one of the many things we talked about was financial struggles. She was telling me about her family friend from Bosnia who went from well-off middle class to out on the streets in a short time. I turned around and looked back at the middle age man standing outside Wawa telling me he needed change to get home because his car broke down. Down the street would be someone picking up cans for a living. And across at 39th and Walnut is the large woman who told me the story of her daughter with kidney failure. In soup kitchens, in shelters, huddled around manholes and on church steps. People in blankets and cardboard boxes.

And in my "middle-class-college-ed-commercial-career" bubble, until today, i have never wondered, will i ever be that person on the streets? It sounded too removed from my reality. I had my parents, my boyfriend, my friends, my savings, my scholarship, all these to prop me up. There are back up plans after back up plans, life insurance, shares, stocks, properties.

Would i one day be on the streets begging for change? And suddenly it just became all to possible for it to happen to anyone. It's about being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, all at the same time. And if it has happened for so many people, suddenly i stopped taking the ability to buy a $4 chai latte from starbucks for granted.