today at work, me, "book editor" [yet another of the made-up titles i've given myself here] received a review copy of a book titled silver spoon kids: communicating about money in healthy ways; teaching strong values and compassion; and preventing a feeling of entitlement.
too bad someone didn't write this book 25 years ago.
if there's one thing i hate about the area that i live, it's this feeling of entitlement that pervades it. everyone here is rich, everyone's parents are rich. someone once complained to me that their parents didn't put a big bow on their car when they gifted it ... to which i pointed out that her parents did actually give her a car.
around here, it's standard practice for one's parents to cover minor and major whims: cell phones, airline tickets, two-week vacations in thailand. maybe i'm just jealous, i'm not sure. i mean, i wasn't exactly in the poorhouse when i was a kid, though i remember my brother and i going to nightshift work with my dad when there was no babysitter and my mom was also working nightshift at a convenience store. we kept some messed-up hours. my parents gave me everything they could, and for that i'm grateful, but i would have never approached my parents with the attitude and demands that are so status quo today.
i don't know why, this really bothers me.
____
i got an e-mail from amazon today, reminding me of my upcoming birthday. thank you, amazon, i didn't know this. it doesn't matter to me, amazon, so it shouldn't matter to you.
i don't like my birthday. i had a game last year on that night, postgame i hung out at a bar with friends and essentially cried my eyes out. the year before, i spent it alone. i'm not sure about the year before that, but a few years earlier i distinctly remember celebrating with my college newspaper compadres, and later in the early hours of the day, gasping for breath in my rundown basement apartment, as i wondered where the years had gone and where my life was headed. straight to hell, it seemed at the time.
this year i've got a concert ticket. just me and a 930 club full of strangers. i'm looking forward to this, this is how it should be. i'm not a fan of birthdays, in general. at least not my own.
____
my nightmares are back. last night was all blood, all the way. brandon and his younger brother were visiting dc. brandon left the room and someone arrived with the intent of killing his brother. i took the bullets, three in the back. then one in the head, just to make sure i was dead. i wasn't, though, i stayed remarkably still and marveled at the numbness in my jaw.
later an old man had a heart attack in the backseat of a convertible, and no one would help him. blood started streaming from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. i tried helping him, i was doused in blood, his and mine.
i'm tired of being so bloody in my dreams.
____
i've decided to get a part-time job. i'm going to ask if i can barback at the place i hang out after all my games; for some reason bartending has always been some sort of god-like position to me. because they control the beer.... no, really, i've always wanted to do that, and i've got years of experience at bars. if that doesn't work i have this plan for helping people make HOV restrictions that i think could be really lucrative and not at all personally dangerous.
xmx said at 2:08 PM 03-12-2002: my idea is to charge people $10 to ride in the car with them. through morning rush hour, and later afternoon rush hour, i'm thinking i could pull in some pretty sweet change by hitching back to my original starting point and riding into the city over and over again.
xmx said at 2:16 PM 03-12-2002: yes, but when dc becomes populated with millions of inflatable women, the police will come looking for me. my way, there's no evidence. i'm untraceable.
anotherben said at 2:32 PM 03-12-2002: im thinking just a torso and a head.. no need for genders. i am planning on having different colors tho.. to help promote racial harmony in the commuter zone.
xmx said at 3:22 PM 03-12-2002: now, will the turbans be considered an accessory [charge extra], or come as part of the doll [included]? i'm thinking that particular model is sure to be a bestseller!
nathan [email] said at 7:02 PM 03-14-2002: I remember somebody getting caught in Houston in the early nineties, driving with a mannequin as a carpooler. A mannequin would be easier to explain.
brianbibbly [email] said at 3:15 PM 03-12-2002: Ok bartender, how do you make a rob roy, a rusty nail and a sazerac? GO! Answer in 2 mins or this message will self destruct!
xmx said at 11:46 AM 03-13-2002: ha. in related news, i have an interview on sunday at 4 at the bar. assuming that goes well, i think i start on the spot.
pAver ben [ url ] said at 4:46 PM 03-13-2002: meredith, you happen to live in a pretty well-to-do part of this area. you're going to find that kind of attitude in any similar area no matter where you go. all cities/burbs have thier richer areas, and people who have been brought up that way are going to act that way. it has nothing to do with this area in general. to think it's local to around here is naive.
xmx said at 9:38 AM 03-14-2002: you shouldn't take my argument personally, just because you were born and raised here and because you're raising puppies here. you weren't the focus of my wrath, and this argument is one we've long disagreed on. visit the mall one saturday afternoon, sit yourself on a bench and observe. you'll see exactly what i mean.
pAver ben said at 10:29 AM 03-14-2002: visit any mall in america on a saturday afternoon and you'll see exactly what you mean. the dc area has no monopoly on self-importance or any sense of entitlement. that's the world, yo.
pAver ben said at 10:31 AM 03-14-2002: i don't know what kind of fantasy land you've lived your life in, but your views just aren't based on reality. yes, that attitude pervades this area, but it pervades all the other areas as well.
pAver ben said at 10:58 AM 03-14-2002: all the other areas, like america.
obviously there are going to be pockets of areas that don't suffer from this attitude as much (mostly small towns I would think), but the attitude of which you speak is an american institution. if you compare this area to any other similar sized area in the country, you're going to find the same thing. you may not believe it based on trips to other areas, but until you live in an area for a while, you don't see everything. If you truly believe this is centralized here in the greater Washington DC area, then you are a fool.
Yes, I do take a little offense at the idea (I love this area), but not as much as you think. I'd have a similar argument to someone who makes similar generalizations to any area. You're going to find this kind of crap anywhere. There are good and bad, and cool and annoying people everywhere, not just DC.
xmeredithx [email] said at 11:07 AM 03-14-2002: in the country, you're going to find the same thing. you may not believe it based on trips to other areas, but until you live in an area for a while, you don't see everything.
so where else have you lived, where you have witnessed this sort of entitlement and self-importance?
pAverandy [ url ] said at 1:46 AM 03-15-2002: Dammit, I missed the discussion, well here’s my 2 cents anyway…
Meredith, I also have a problem with your generalizations. Don't think for a second that attitude is only specific to this area.
Columbus OH is a great example of what Ben is talking about. The south part of that city is about as shitty as it can get. As you move north though, you come into the yuppie part of town. In that area you will see people driving their BMW's blaring rap. Remember, that’s Columbus; it doesn’t really have any large significance – it’s just another city, no different than anywhere else. Bottom line, it depends on where the money is concentrated, every city has that area, even a place like Youngstown. Do you think Chicago is any different? How about California?
If you lived where my house is, I think you’d have a different view depicted from the surrounding area. It’s not the ghetto, but it is a bit run down, and BMW’s aren’t every 3rd car. There are lots of areas like that around here, you aren’t in one of them. At least I hope you’re not making your judgments based from Tysons and surrounding areas.
You can’t judge the entire area from a few spoiled kids. Place yourself into the shoes of their parents. If you could easily afford to send your kids around the world and give them trinkets, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you want to give your children things you couldn’t have as a kid? Yes, people can go overboard with this practice, but I guarantee you, it’s no different from any other affluent location, in any other town. Your complaint is more of a generational thing, than regional.
mary [email] said at 12:55 PM 03-15-2002: I feel this sudden urge to defend Columbus. It's not "just another city." It's the biggest city in Ohio. Home to the second-largest college in the country. The state's capital. It's crawling with money. And the presence of all those state officials guarantees it a high ranking on the self-importance scale.
mary [email] said at 10:54 AM 03-14-2002: To varying degrees. There was a hell of a lot less of it in the town where I grew up than there is in D.C.
Man, I used to hate that town. I've begun to appreciate a lot of things about it now in my Old Age. I miss how family-oriented things were. And no I don't mean Focus-on-the-Family, James Dobson sorta "Family." I mean my grandma drinking margaritas and telling me stories about my mom that she'd rather not have me hear. Tetris and Maker's Mark with my lil bro. Me and my cousin Cherie making our own bathing suits out of quilting scraps so we could look more "glamourous" when we swam in the muddy creek near my great-grandparents farm.
Of course, my town is also full of racial and religious bigotry.
xmeredithx [email] said at 11:03 AM 03-14-2002: maybe the longer you're away from your birthplace, the greater it seems.
my parents think i'm insane because whenever i see them, i'm offering up an apology for something i did when i was a kid. like when i bitched and moaned and threw a tantrum because i just had to have that strawberry shortcake dollhouse.
when i was younger, i didn't see how my parents were struggling to make ends meet, working their asses off, sacrificing their own wants and needs to give me and my brother things.
and ever since i've been older, struggling to pay my own bills and marveling at the fact that my parents accomplished this, there's a sense of what a complete asshole i was as a kid. i mean, i didn't know. but i know now, and like i said, i'm always apologizing, for which my parents think i'm insane. [well and for other reasons too].
the thing is, that kids around here seem to have *everything* handed to them. they don't work for anything, mostly because their parents don't struggle. and they'll never have that sort of respect or ethic that comes with work and sharing bedrooms and not always getting whatever you want.
mary [email] said at 11:39 AM 03-14-2002: Must be a rite of passage for adulthood.
I've been doing the same thing for the past few years. Not necessarily apologizing (tho I have done some of that, too, and not just to my parents), but developing a better sympathy for the sacrifices my parents and other family members made for me. And feeling a sometimes overwhelming sense of debt to them. You'll know it's bad when instead of calling old lovers when you stumble home at 4 am drunk, you call your grandma and thank her for teaching you how to talk. Or how to use a fork.
xmx said at 11:47 AM 03-14-2002: maybe it is some rite of passage. who knows. i think regression is another rite. last night i asked my mom to bring my security blanket to town this weekend. for some reason, i want to hold onto all these remnants of my childhood. the strawberry shortcake dollhouse won't fit in the car, as bad as i want it here. this is off the subject, though.
nathan [email] said at 7:06 PM 03-14-2002: My dad mandated that I apol. to him for giving a hard time about not being a vegetarian. I don't think that such an apology was necessary, kids do all types of crass things many of which are excusable as they are members of a disempowered class.
josh [email] said at 12:45 PM 03-14-2002: This is just a function of the times being less hard, overall, then they were when we were kids.
My dad does the same work now as he has done all his life, in the same medium sized town. He has a six month backlog of work now. I remeber when I was a kid, he wouldn't even always have a job. People didn't have themoney to hire him. This current recession is a pale shadow of the one in the eighties, at least as far as I remeber it.
xmeredithx [email] said at 10:56 AM 03-14-2002: inherent in this area is corporate legitimacy. it oozes money. the self-importance of parents trickles down into self-important little monsters. the world isn't like this, dc is like this. dc is particularly bad. i've lived other places -- small town pennsylvania, yes, but there is a difference. i'm not saying one is better than the other -- because lord knows how i enjoy having a starbucks on every corner and a mall every half mile -- but there is more integrity and ethic in small towns, and other places, than there is here. like i said, i've lived elsewhere. and i've spent enough time in other places to discern that it is not the same everywhere. it's all part of the dc hub, the government is here, technology is here, it's basically a "recession resistant" area. it will never stop growing. and neither will the bank accounts, or the egos.
mary [email] said at 10:58 AM 03-14-2002: D.C. has the highest per-capita rate of "self-importance" I have ever seen. Even the bums are in suits and are too busy to talk to you. On K Street, at least.
josh [email] said at 12:42 PM 03-14-2002: So far I've been to San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Houston, Austin, Richmond, Dallas, Atlanta, New Orleans, Palo Alto, Gainesville, Baton Rouge, New York City, Boston, New Haven, Chicago, Baltimore, among others, and I'd say the DC Metro rates very high on the self-importance scale. Higher than Baltimore, which is 40 minutes away and, I believe, has more people. Much higher than Baton Rouge or New Orleans or Atlanta. Probably not as high as Palo Alto, though (but it was during the height of the Dot Com madness when I was there the most).
anotherben [email] said at 9:48 AM 03-14-2002: on the news last night there was a story about a woman who caused a major wreck because her mannequin (sp?) fell over on her while she was driving in the HOV lane. thats why my dummy passengers come with gyroscopic self-balancing capabilities..and a little piece of string that loops around the headrest..just in case.
