Me on Wall Street January of 2008, rubbing the bull's balls for luck, or wealth or whatever one rubs them for. 

Thinking about the recession has me thinking about how lucky I am, a lesson my parents taught me by accident:  They  let me live with eight Russian men for six weeks when I was sixteen. 

In 1989, I was chosen as a competitor on the U.S. South Central Rafting team.  We competed against other rafters from around the world at a project R.A.F.T competition. 

Project R.A.F.T. was an organization that put on paddling competitions specifically to foster cross-cultural communication.  Since there’s no organized international governing body for rafting, the competition also became a de facto “world championship.”  

1989 was the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union.  The same month as the competition, Russian citizens voted for members of a legislative body for the first time ever.  A few weeks later, the Russian government erupted into turmoil. The Berlin wall fell the following November.   

With Perestroika came more freedom of travel for average Russians. This freedom meant that average Russians could sit around a campfire with average Americans in a way that wasn’t really possible during the Cold War.  To that end, the Project R.A.F.T. organizers paired American and Russian teams.

We spent two weeks competing against each other during the day. At night, we ate our meals together and sat around the campfire until we retired to the large military-style tents we shared. 

After the competition was over, my parents invited our partner team back to Arkansas, to live in our farm house and travel around the state, teaching Arkansas school kids about Russia.  

I learned a few things during those two weeks camping:  that the word “cyka” refers to a body part and doesn’t mean “small,” like I thought; Homemade vodka could be smuggled into the country using metal juice cans and a small blowtorch; and that I could hang out with fifteen men, half of whom did not share my language, and enjoy myself.   I was the only female on my team or the Russian team.  The only other female around most of the time was our interpreter, who was always in high demand.  

I didn’t really learn much about how our Russian guests saw the world until we all took the long road trip to Arkansas from North Carolina.  My parents arrived a few days ahead of the rest of the group so they could prepare the house.  The Russian team stopped in Little Rock for a few days to stay with a fellow team member.  My mom bought $200 worth of fruit, thinking it would last the first week at a minimum. She stocked up on everything she could imagine needing, including legal vodka.

 When the Russians did arrive, we showed them their rooms and gathered in the kitchen.  Once they started eating the fruit, they ate until every single piece was gone.  They filled an entire trash can with banana peels.   I kept asking the interpreter what it was about the fruit.  They ate like starving people.  She just said, “people don’t get fresh fruit very often in Russia.”  

I thought I misheard her. I thought maybe she said, “people really like fresh fruit in Russia.”  I was sixteen years old. I’d never left the country.  Everything I knew about the world told me that a person ought to be able to just go to the grocery store and buy bananas, anytime of the year.  

The next day, we took them to Wal-Mart.  We’d been warned that this would be a much longer day than we planned, but we really didn’t understand the implications.  Instead, my Mom just appointed every person to a Russian teammate and sent us off to help our guests navigate the store. “Meet back here in an hour,” she said.   

My charge wanted to see the shoes, which he told me by pointing at his own shoes.  I was useless at explaining American sizes to him and we had to track down the translator to help me explain.  

He looked at every single pair of shoes in the aisle, women’s and men’s.   Three hours later, we finally stumbled into another aisle, dragging a shopping cart full of shoes.   Cheap Wal-mart shoes, I thought.  Who on earth would need that many cheap Wal-mart shoes?   

I had no concept of the way Russians in the old Soviet Union shopped:  they often stood in long lines for things as simple as food, and shoes, so they had to be really sure they wanted to buy anything.

When we finally corralled the group back together, we’d been inside the Wal-mart for five hours.  Each team member had large quantities of very specific items:   shoes, jeans, condoms, shampoo, underwear, and deodorant.  They looked like they were stocking a small store; they had so much of everything.

The cases of condoms were a little hard to explain to the checkout clerk, but otherwise everyone treated them sort of like friendly space-men, who really liked shoes and condoms and fruit.  

On the ride home, I listened to them talk to one another in Russian. I didn’t understand a word, but I was beginning to understand something fundamental about the world:  Our wealth is relative, it is fleeting, and by accident of my birth I’m one of the luckiest people on earth.  I’m white, I’m middle class, and I’m an American. 

It didn’t formulate until a few days later, while we took a couple of the Russians across town for a meal at a restaurant.  One of the guys who could speak decent English said, “Where are poor people? I want to see the poor people.”   

My mom, who was driving, didn’t know what to say.  She drove him through a part of town that we’d consider “poor.”  It was a half-block of neglected houses surrounded by dilapidated businesses. He wasn’t satisfied.  “No,” he said, “The really poor people.”   

“These are the really poor people,” My mom said. 

“No,” He said, “this isn’t poor.  This is good.  They have electricity, yes? They have water in the house?” 

We said yes, yes, they did. 

“They have a telephone?”  He asked. 

We didn’t know, we said, but most likely.  Everyone had a telephone.  It was hard to live without one.  

He didn’t speak on all the way back to our huge house in the country, with fruit and satellite television, and a hot-tub,  surrounded by our own ten acres of land.  I never looked at any of it exactly the same way again.  

It felt like I lived in some kind of blessed culture, a place where all things were at my fingertips, and there seemed something wrong about that.  I started to pay attention to the world, to the state of things outside my universe.  

As the new year rolls around, I'm thinking about the Russians again.  I'm still blessed -- because I have a job, a have a house that hasn't lost too much value, my spouse has a pretty stable job.  We're in debt and we're paying medical bills, but we can afford to keep paying it all.   We lack nothing.   All I can do is extend sympathy to those around me who aren't so lucky, and try remember, constantly, the definition of poor.   

P.S.  If you don't know about Heifer International, and you think you have a kid who could use a lesson in relative wealth, check out their One World Village overnight groups at their Learning Centers.