You've signed up for this simulation experience, and you aren't at all sure what to expect as you come somewhat nervously to the registration table.

You find that everyone is being assigned to a family and to a role in that family. The older man in front of you is the mother in a family of 4. The teen-aged boy from a local Catholic high school is the father in a family of 3. You are a middle-aged woman but will be playing a toddler in a family of 5 in which, it turns out, a young woman playing the grandmother is the head of the family. You've been instructed to find your family's home, a set of chairs in a circle with a sign indicating the family name. You have an envelope with all the information you need about the family's financial circumstances and your specific role.

It's time to begin. The moderator describes the plan for the morning. There will be 4 fifteen-minute periods of activity, each representing a week in the life of the family. In that time family members must cope with the need to pay the rent and utility bills, cover unexpected illnesses, secure the transportation vouchers that must be handed over before any of the agencies and business will provide services, buy food, pay off store debts, sign up for food stamps, go to work or look for employment, take out loans, and keep an eye on the older kids who have plenty of time for mischief. A five-minute break between each "week" allows a brief time of planning and strategizing.

In this town there is a social services office, day care center, jail, food store, community service office, a place of employment where you go if you have a job (and hand over 5 travel vouchers, one for each day of the work week) and where you go if you are seeking a job, a school, a Quick Cash outlet, a bank, pawnshop, and the electric company office.

The simulation begins. You all too quickly learn about

– standing in long lines just to get to the receptionist at the social services office

– having to complete complex forms before you can get in the next line to see a counselor and discovering you don't know your children's Social Security numbers and will have to return home to get them (at the cost of a travel voucher for you and whoever came with you)

– being turned away because its closing time

– the futility of complaining

– dragging the preschoolers along with you (at the cost of a travel voucher for each child) because you can't afford day care and finding your older children unexpectedly at home: they've been suspended or dismissed early because of a water failure at the school

– being enticed to engage in illegal activities

– succumbing to this "easy way out"

– having your hard won cash and travel vouchers stolen

– being ripped off at the Quick Cash outlet and not knowing it

– facing eviction because of unpaid rent or overdue mortgage payments.

The simulation ends with an open discussion as you and other participants speak of what you did and what you felt as you lived, however briefly, on the edge.

12/1/07