My wife and I make okay money in a middle class area, but, due to a combination of good luck, and contrived to circumstances, we recently got to watch a college football game in the stadium’s super executive corporate sponsor level suite. It was awesome. Open bar, amazing catered food, and people networking all around me who are clearly in the c-suite of their respective companies. I had a list of crazy things I was going to say if someone asked me what I did, but it never came up.
Growing up poor, and eventually working my way into a tech job dealt me a long stream of culture shocks. Just socialising with people earning over 100k is wild. The vacations, hobbies, and even anecdotes, are all so different than what I imagined. I feel I betray my roots a thousand times a day.
I know this is just basic working class petit bourgeois stuff (that I’m part of), but the carefree attitude is so alien to me. I can’t imagine feeling so entitled to luxury.
My older brother is a Tony Award winning producer and I took a trip to NYC ten years ago. His business partner is a former schoolteacher who became friends with a celebrity and got rich producing her stage plays.
Before going to NYC, I called them up and told them “Hey, I’m going to go see the Yankees while I’m there. There are $15 tickets in the outfield. Wanna go?” It was Jeter’s last year and I wanted to see him play live at Yankee Stadium. Their response was “Don’t worry, we’ll handle it.”
Handling it meant lunch at the stadium club, with Peyton Manning and a bunch of celebrities in the dining room and lobster piled higher than my head, literally. The most luxurious lunch I’ve had in my life. Then we rode the escalator down to our seats, through a tunnel lined with every free candy you can think of on both sides, to the second row behind the Yankee dugout, with our own dedicated server, who kept bringing us wonderful drinks. (TEN FEET AWAY FROM DEREK JETER) Then, in the third inning, another surprise: someone taps me on my shoulder holding one of the bases from batting practice, which my brother’s business partner purchased and had framed for me with my ticket and a photo.
That was too overwhelming. I couldn’t help but cry.
We went for another meal in the 7th inning. The food was still fresh and amazing.
The Yankees lost that day, but it’s okay.
I call it my ‘Make a Wish’ Day.
That’s hilarious, that you had to pretend you were dying of cancer for such extravagance to make sense in your life.
I think you misread what I wrote.
I call it my ‘Make a Wish’ Day.
you had to pretend you were dying of cancer
I don’t think he did. Just a joke.
I couldn’t help but cry.
Me neither friend. What a great story
It was the most overwhelming gift I have ever received.
And the thing is, his business partner does similar things for a lot of people. She never lost touch with being a wage earner and her understanding of being a non-wealthy person, and she loves spoiling people because of it. Just awesome.
I stayed a few nights at the St. Regis in NYC in the presidential suite. Pretty ridiculous, 3 bedrooms, 4 baths, private butler, full kitchen and dining room, use of a Bentley, 3,430 sq ft. (318 sqm) bigger than any house I ever lived in.
Through my old job I got to do lots of stupid shit, fly private internationally, use someone’s beach house for a week on their own island, etc.
While aspects of it were fun, I always felt like an outsider, and the waste really bothered me. I’m someone who bicycles or walks to the farmers market with a courier bag.
The waste of it kills me! We make a good living and we do a lot of fun things, but we have friends that have and spend a lot more than we do. Sometimes it bothers me that what gets thrown away on crap is more than what a lot of people make.
