Backsides
This week’s assignment was “Backside”.
I pondered this assignment thinking about all the terms that go along with back–or backside.There’s back draft, back lash, back fire, turn your back, go backwards, turn back, and then all those things that used to happen behind the barn. But I was in a city busy with disability exams for Social Security–not for myself but for people who have decided that they want/need a disability check.
I chose to take a photo of the back of a nearby office building–the place where the utilities are hidden along with garbage cans, cast off furniture, broken grocery carts, cardboard boxes and so forth. This builidng had a very discrete very tall wooden fence hiding all of this—yes, I peeked through the spaces between the boards to see.
I could say a lot about my day doing disability exams for Social Security but it is very depressing. So many people just want a check instead of trying something else, trying to improve their health–they want someone else to take care of them. And the grouching that we were behind schedule! Some people wanted to tell me their life story and like a three year old point out every ‘owie’ and it was so amazing to see that my exam must have had restorative healing properties as many were able to leave the exam area with little indication of their claimed disability.
This is the backside of Social Security.
But I finished in good time–and arrived home today to find my chickies had survived the weekend without me–tomorrow you will get to see how much they have grown.
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Sylvia Weir Art 