Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! (If only.)

I am spending the week in Harris County, a.k.a. Houston, a.k.a. the death penalty capital of the world. I nearly got permanently lost in its subterranean tunnel system, but have otherwise have had a lovely ol’ time here and have not been murdered once, or even had to put anybody to death.

And then, I saw this:

One Houston woman has been taking care of her mother and her 5 year old son for years without a car. She doesn’t have to do that anymore. Phalyn Cornealius was honored by the Harris County Department of Education’s Headstart program, getting this year’s “Responsible Parenting” award. With it came a Chevrolet sedan, beautifully refurbished by Bates Custom and Collision in Baytown.

A few things came to mind.

1) Good for her.

2) This is a better incentive deal than is being offered by the Russians, who were giving free cars to people who conceived a baby. Let’s use those cars to take care of the babies that are already on this earth.

3) The perky newscasters kept saying how lucky Phalyn was. I’m going to go out on a limb and say she’s not that lucky. Lucky would be growing up rich or even middle class. Lucky would mean being a white-toothed newsreader. Lucky would be having someone pay for her and her kid’s education. Lucky is to not have to scrape and bow for a refurbished Chevy.

4) Why should we need to be lucky in this country just to make it with a kid? Screw luck. How about some systemic change? She got the car in part because she is diligently studying to be a medical assistant. That’s a tough job even when you graduate. You’re on the front lines of medical care. You have to respond every time the PA calls out a “Code Brown” on the hospital floor. Yet it’s unlikely you’ll make more than $35K a year. Your kid will be college age in 2021, at which point a four-year education will cost $143,484.  She’d need to save over $10,000 of her post-tax salary a year to afford that. Too bad your young scholar also needs to eat and have a roof over his head.

5) On the flight down here, I sat next to a deadheading flight attendant who was raising her teenager by herself. It had been a long day of delays, the weather was unruly, and she wasn’t going to be able to make it back to Tampa to see her kid until two days later. Instead she had found herself on the endless vortex of the Newark-Houston route. She looked exhausted. I know that we’re dads on this here blog, but let me just say, big ups to the single moms. There’s a lot of you, and you’re getting the job done, donated Chevy or not.