Nowadays I’m doing the Social Security
Hustle, which is a dance that a lot of
cripples do.
I started doing it last summer, right
around the time I started officially collecting Social Security. And as pretty
much every cripple who collects Social Security knows, just because you have a
steady check coming in every month doesn’t mean you’re on Easy Street. Hell,
if you’re one of those cripples who collects SSI, the most your monthly check
can be is $841. Who the hell can get by on that?
So cripples collecting Social Security
are constantly following scents that might lead to a side gig that will bring in
a few extra bucks. But it’s a dance on a tightrope. You can’t bring in too many
bucks because if Social Security finds out about it, your check may well get reduced or
cut off altogether. But you can’t just do shit for free either because that
defeats the purpose of doing the Social Security Hustle.
The first thing you have to do is make a
list of what you have to offer that someone might actually pay money for. Everybody
has something of value, even if it’s just an extra kidney or blood that can be the raw material
for making plasma.
The thing I try to sell the most is the well of knowledge and wisdom I’ve developed from my decades of living as a cripple. Every once in a while I’ll find someone who thinks it’s worth it to pay me for a piece of that. And so I’ll end up in a focus group or being a guest speaker in a class or something like that.
I recently hustled up a gig where I'll receive a bunch of different straws and then critique the experience of drinking through each of them. I don’t know who wants to know this information or why but who cares? If anybody knows a thing or two about drinking through a straw it’s me. I do it every day. I drink beer and martinis through a straw. I have strong opinions about which straw is most appropriate for which imbibing scenario, taking in to account the type of glass, the viscosity of the liquid and other factors. I’m probably one of the world’s leading experts on drinking through a straw. So if someone needs to hear my unique perspective on the matter, it’s only fair that they pay top dollar.
But when you’re doing the Social Security Hustle, top dollar is about $100 because remember, you can’t hustle up too much. And a lot of times the payment for your hustle comes in the form of a gift card from Target or Amazon or someplace like that. It’s not exactly the same warm feeling you get when somebody hands you cold, hard cash, but it’ll do.
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