Merry Christmas from Uncle Sam : 12.22.03 @ 9:22 pm

Here�s a story for you.

See, there was this man. He was on welfare as a child, one of five children left in America by a well-meaning Canadian father and raised by his eldest sister.
But he wanted more then that. So he put himself through the state university, where he met a woman and they fell in love. After he graduated, he moved to a remote area of Maine and worked for U.S. Customs at the border with his new wife. They scraped together money for rent and to pay off college loans, living in a run down house hours away from the nearest town. Their own house wasn�t even in a town, but a township where the only citizens worked for this tiny border station. Two years later, they had a baby girl, born in Canada because that was the closest hospital.

Later, they moved to a town, just as rural, and bought their first house. He would work long hours at the border station, midnights and overtime, leaving his wife home with their baby girl and soon, a baby boy. Two years later, he was promoted and they all moved to an apartment building in the suburbs of Portland. The woman was pregnant again when they realized that their two year old baby boy wasn�t like other two year olds. Despite his bright little smile, he just wasn�t as smart, wasn�t as quick as he should be.
The doctors called it Autism.

The new baby was a girl - the oldest girl wasn�t too happy about this. A brother was fine, but she was Daddy�s girl. After hours of hardwork and overtime, he put in for a promotion back up North.

They settled into the sleepy farming community on the border of Canada, going to school, making friends. They hit a few bumps in the road. The apartment buildings they had purchased previously were bombing investment wise. The little boy wasn�t running like the other kids in Physical Education, his teacher said.
So they took him to a special doctor in Boston and the special doctor told the man and his wife that he had Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
The woman started crying at night because her little boy was going to die before he could ever grow up, go to college, get a job, start a family, and give her little grandchildren.

There were other bumps along the way, but they were relatively happy in their house where all the children grew up. They poured thousands of dollars into adapting their house so the little boy could get in and out easily, adding an addition, putting in a wheelchair lift, getting a handicapped accessible van.
But soon, the government saw that he was working so hard and doing so well up in nowhere, Maine, so they gave him an even bigger promotion - in Washington D.C.

So the family packs up and moves to Fairfax County, but things aren�t what they seemed on the surface. The house they buy is half the size and costs twice as much, and the mortgage and other bills require that the wife get a part time job that she juggles between taking care of her handicapped son. The little nest egg they had built was all but gone, any college funds for their eldest daughter lost in the stock market.

But it�s time for the eldest daughter to apply for colleges, and she falls in love. It�s a tiny alternative college in Vermont - and blind, like love is - she applies early decision, believing the school would look at more then just her father�s salary, a salary eaten up by mortgage, car payments, medical bills, living expenses that nickle and dime them until even the woman�s part time job barely covers things...
But this isn�t so, because the government looks at the father�s salary and says the family can comfortable afford college. So the school looks at their little grid and compares it to the government�s findings, and offers the eldest daughter $7,000 to pay for a $40,000 education.
Because the father just makes too much.

The family talks about the effect of that amount of loans would have on their fiances - its just not possible.
So the eldest girl puts away dreams of attending that particular college, and watches as dreams of being a photographer slip away as well.
She settles into the mind set of attending a near by public university and working her ass off to get good grades so in graduate school she has hopes of attending an elite private university.
Maybe this time with financial aid.

But there's still the bitter taste of a government who squashes the dreams of little girls by not looking at the whole picture.

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