For the first five years of my life, it was just Mom and me. We were best buddies, had great times, and enjoyed much true happiness. We were also poor. Not destitute, mind you, but definitely finding creative ways of living week to week. This is not to imply that we didn't have our own luxuries - every payday we would make a trek to the local record store and Mom would let me pick out any record I wanted. I eagerly added the single to my thick stack of 45's and spent hours dancing and singing in front of my Winnie-the-Pooh record player. But I know it was often a real struggle to get by on just a waitress' "salary".

During those years I spent a lot of time with my cousin Lauren, who is a year older than me, while Mom was working. We played and played for hours, and had many laughs and many arguments (power struggles at age four!). In those years, it often felt like Lauren was my sister, and I remember feeling very loved. Not poor. Not a "kid without a dad". Just loved. But the situation with the Underoos…now that really got me. For way too long.

You see, Lauren and I loved to be Super Heroes. At the time, our favorite tv programming was the Superfriends cartoon and the super-disco-cool live action Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman, it should be said, was one of my favorite idols: gorgeous, strong, smart, and wearing an amazing uniform. Lauren had a set of Wonder Woman Underoos, this panties-and-undershirt set deigned to look "just like" Wonder Woman's outfit. Needless to say, if you have the costume, you get to be the character…and I didn't have the costume. While Lauren would get decked out in her Wonder Woman Underoos, winter boots and "magic lasso", I would get stuck being "Isis" in my plain white underclothes.

That, I decided, was the worst thing about being poor.

Later, of course, I got the hand-me-downs. When Lauren outgrew her Wonder Woman swimsuit (that's right, she had the Underoos and the swimsuit), I proceeded to wear it constantly around the house(ignoring the fact that I was wearing a swimsuit in the middle of winter), making guests pretend to think I was really Wonder Woman. "Jo," they would call to my mom "you won't believe it, but I think Wonder Woman has just walked into your apartment."

But by that time Lauren had moved on to other pop culture icons. She had a mom and dad that could buy her whatever costume she wanted, and the magic lasso lost some of its luster.

In the end, I made it through the Underoos famine quite all right. Soon enough I had a dad, a brother, and a Barbie Townhouse. If my only memory of deprivation involves a pair of silkscreened underclothes, it's clear that life has been pretty good.