Who Gives A Shit: What Color Is Your parachute?

Anecdotally, I can say that I have never known so many unemployed people. Sometimes it feels like I've timed my adulthood to coincide with recessions, but this one is pretty bad.

Every time I run into somebody lateley, they seem to have lost their job. Formerly clean-cut neighbors are suddenly sporting "funemployment goatees." Business chic has been replaced with sweat pants at morning school drop off. Legions of former magazine editors are now writing their novels...or blogging. And there are way more folks in Long Meadow every morning for off leash hours in Prospect Park.

I've lost count of how many middle-classed people I know who are living on the verge, cashing out IRAs, and going without health insurance; white bread people in True Religion jeans buying groceries at the Park Slope  Food Coop with quarter collections or EBT cards (formerly known as food stamps); parents raiding
their kids' piggy banks and wallets (okay, that one's me and the 11-year-old *may* actually have a future as a moneylender; as the friggin interest rates are killing me).

Anyway, this whole thing really feels ever so slightly apocalyptic.

Before all this went down, I've often wondered how people have been cracking such a huge nut every
month. I mean, some of these Park Slope mortgages are just colossal. Was there some kind of giant Ponzi scheme going on? Were people putting on a good face while going upside down or under?

So now I'm wondering: what IS the unemployment rate in Park Slope?

Are you a nouveau poor?

What are people doing to get by? Have you started a dog walking business? Opened an "office" at Starbucks or the Tea Lounge? Cashed in all your kids' quarters at the coinstar?

Is this going to end any time soon?

What color IS my parachute, and what the fuck is that book about, again?

Do you have any answers, bright ideas, epiphanies, or war stories to share? We'd like to hear them.