How it feels to be a poor mother without heat during a blizzard.
At the end of a row of abandoned homes in one of Washington’s poorest neighborhoods, it’s 7:30 a.m., and Chamika McLaughlin climbs out of bed. She dreads this time of day. It’s when she has to make a choice between two terrible options.
Does she stay cold? Or does she put her life at risk?
McLaughlin pulls on a blue hat, wraps a black sweater around her slight frame and pads into the kitchen. Hands tucked in her armpits, she shivers in the early-morning chill. School is canceled today, and her 12-year-old son, sleeping in one of the apartment’s two bedrooms, will soon awake. She has to get the house warmer. So, as she’s done countless times over two heatless winters in this apartment, she reaches for the oven dial.
McLaughlin, 30, knows heating her home this way could start a fire — oven blazes kill people every year. But she feels she didn’t have a choice. She’s marooned with defective radiators in one of the worst blizzards to hit the District in years. McLaughlin turns the oven to 400 degrees, pulls down its door and watches the coils inside glow red.
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A few years ago, while watching the teevee, a commercial from the local cable company advertising for the "Big Game," so effed up we can be sued for saying the Super Bowl, but I digress. SuperBowlSuperBowlSuperBowl! Hah!
Okay, back to the story. The commercial scene was 3 men inside with a charcoal grill, they were all bundled up being pretendbians and bad ass. But really? I called the cable company to have them reconsider this commercial and how I believed them to be irresponsible. Yes, some folks may think it is quite fine to start a charcoal grill indoors. What I heard back......*crickets.