This past weekend, I visited a suburb of Chicago to see my aunt. We were going downtown. My aunt, who hadn’t said a word about anything I was wearing until this moment, insisted that I dress up. I did, and she even let me borrow a black handbag and what looked like pearl earrings, which she later said were just “three dollars from Claire’s” and let me keep. “People are nicer to you if you’re dressed up,” she said to me.
When we got downtown, we were walking on the street, when I saw two small girls with what looked like their father standing on a street corner huddled in blankets. Being from rural Wisconsin, this site shocked me. The girls couldn’t have been older than three and six. But, despite being shocked, I continued to march along the avenue along with the crowd.
The contrast was stupefying. Witnessing my aunt’s unbelievable wealth next to a family’s destitute situation really affected me, and images of the homeless girls on the sidewalk on a street corner huddled in blankets still live in my head rent-free.
Things We Forget 
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