Just a last reflection, and this might be my last post in 2015.
“Poor” is relative. I grew up poor relative to most people in this country. Right now, most people would consider me "well off.
But I have, in my time, known lots of people who are truly rich but don’t seem so, and people who are truly rich who do.
I don’t dress badly, but I don’t buy $5,000 suits. I drive good cars, but always used.
And from time to time I have occasion to be around people who are truly wealthy and who look the part in every way; the $5,000 suit, the brand-new BMW 700 series, the silk shirt, the $200 tie, the $1,000 shoes. I stick out in a very poor way among them in my $200 off-the-rack suit, my $170 shoes, $25 shirt and my eight-year-old BMW 700 series or my 10-year-old 3/4 ton Silverado. And I’m as sure as I’m born they see the differences. They see them because they know all of the little things I don’t know and won’t ever bother to learn.
There are whole swarms of people like that. I once had the chance to join them. I once had a truly rich girlfriend. She lived in the “Gatsby” part of Long Island; the only child of a ship owner who had died fabulously wealthy. She was as “perfect” in appearance as a young woman of reasonably good looks can. I was in graduate school at the time. She informed me that none of the men in her “circle” actually worked, except that sometimes they would be on boards or foundations or things of that sort. But real work for one’s living? No.
I’ll admit it was an enticing situation. Could have married the girl by simply asking, even just consenting. But I couldn’t do it. There was something really off-putting about the world she lived in and, though it wasn’t her fault, about her.
There was, of course, the “perfection” thing. I didn’t ask, but I imagine her hairdresser was very expensive. Her hair looked it. Her clothes were obviously expensive. She put up with the “dating activities” I could afford (not much) but there was always this sort of thing: “Come to Long Island this summer. We’ll play country set by day and go to Manhattan at night.” She meant every night. I told her I had to work to put myself through school, but that was not a problem. Her mother, she said, would employ me for whatever I needed. She assured me that I could learn to play polo and sail.
It got to where I somehow just couldn’t stand it. We even talked about children, and she assured me that one would be quite enough. I expressed dismay at that, and she then allowed for two. Ultimately, I realized that she didn’t “own her life”, her life owned her. And it would own me too if I stayed with all of that. It wasn’t really her fault. I knew that. What did she know other than what she had grown up with? But it was like she was in one dimension and I was in another, and while I could jump the gap if I wanted to, I would always, in my heart, be a stranger to her world and therefore to her. I was certain I could adapt to the ways of her “circle”, but I would always still be me despite it. I would, for example, always prefer to drink moonshine with hillbillies on a creek bank than to drink Chateau Petrus at a dinner where there were five forks, even if I learned how to use the five forks. I didn’t begrudge those people their wealth or even their ways. It just wasn’t me.
So I broke up with her and married the daughter of a hardware store salesman.
It wasn’t that I preferred a poor girl for the sake of poverty. Poverty itself has little with which to recommend itself. It was because the one who became my wife (and still is) became my “confidant”; a relationship that turned to love. (It didn’t hurt that she was strikingly beautiful, I’ll admit.) In the early years of our marriage we were really poor. But we were happy because of each other. Many of our dates consisted in eating bagels and cucumbers on a river bank because we couldn’t afford anything else. The “event” was just us, and that was enough.
Half the world would say I was insane to give up the “rich girlfriend”, Long Island mansion, polo, sailing and a luxurious life, and some have marveled at the story. Today, I expect the “rich girlfriend” would notice a million negative things about me if she saw me. Everything about me would be “wrong” when they could have been “right”. And I would notice in her a now-somewhat-aged “perfection” to the extent age can be fought off with money. I wouldn’t hate her today. I sure wouldn’t. Not in the least. But if I had joined her world, I might have learned how.
Would I be embarrassed to meet the “rich girlfriend” today? I suppose I would a little. But I would also know my wife is still my confidant, who understands me better than I understand myself. I would know I have five children and 17 grandchildren. I would know I love driving my aging Silverado in the woods, particularly in snow. The mud and cow manure on my boots would be really off-putting to the “rich girlfriend”. But to be truthful, I’m rather proud of it because, while I don’t know how to play polo or sail, I know how to work cattle in a corral and not get killed doing it. (I hope) And I probably would be proud of it in the presence of the “rich girlfriend” too, at least to myself.
There is a certain satisfaction in being oneself, regardless of one’s circumstance. It’s nowhere near as appreciated as it should be.
Do I feel weird about it because society makes me feel bad about being poor? I generally am fine and accepting of my financial position but I know I could work on some of my feelings.
