“We’re all in the same boat.”

You hear that a lot as a metaphor to explain away hard times, to buck up and press on, pull yourself up by your bootlaces, as another cliche goes, I must tacitly disagree.

We are NOT all in the same boat. We are all in our own leaking boats, trying desperately to plug the holes with snips off our bootlaces; except after the last 30 to 40 years, our bootlaces have been snipped away to nothing.

A lot of us, too many of us, don’t have ‘boats’ at all. They’re just clinging to a garbage bag that holds all they have in the world. We don’t see them for the most part, try to ignore their existence, and when that becomes too hard, we use our paddles to shove them as far out of our sight as possible.

Some of us are throwing rocks at people in other boats ‘cos they cain’t stand t’ look at their faces: “Mabel, get mah shotgun, that there colored boat is gettin’ too close to us!”

Let’s not forget the yachts blissfully plowing through us, not a care in the world, not even if a passing boat happens to get pulverized by their rudders.

That’s my metaphor, which I think is closer to the truth,