Relative riches
"[Paul assumed I had had a drycleaner] ... I tell Paul that when I was working with the homeless I didn't have anyone I would refer to as 'my drycleaner'--in fact, I don't think I ever had anything drycleaned at all. ... I don't think I bought any clothes from anywhere but a secondhand store until I was thirty. Most of my friends worked with the homeless, and no one I knew had a drycleaner. Paul grew up in a very different world than I did--his grandfather was John Huston's agent--and he looked at me oddly for a long minute when I told him this.
How'd you get your clothes clean? he finally asked."
--Nick Flynn, The Reenactments
This passage made me think about the assumptions we make about living, and standards of living, and what we think of as rich and poor. To some people, you're rich if you have your own pair of shoes. To others, you're not rich unless you have multiple dwellings and vehicles and investments. I think we all have our own definitions, but rarely compare notes with one another. At some point, I became aware of my own assumptions about what's rich and what's poor, and realized that they were not universal but personal definitions.
My grandparents worked in food service, auto repair, and a print shop. My father made the transition to office work, and then to management. I grew up as a middle-class American, at a time when middle-class families were just beginning to be able to have more than one car, bathroom, and TV set (the TV being the only electronic gadget most such families owned then, other than probably a stereo). We never had to worry about where the next meal was coming from, but luxuries were rare: planned and saved for. Growing up, I assumed a person was rich if he or she hired someone to clean the house or take care of the lawn; had anything that could be called "investments," a "trust," or an "inheritance;" owned a vacation home; or attended a private school. And then there were little details, such as ordering room service, which I thought was the most luxurious thing ever. You saw people do it on TV all the time, but I was never allowed to do it when my family stayed at a hotel. (I got most of my ideas about how rich people lived from TV, books, and movies.)
Since forming these impressions, biases, and assumptions, I've learned a little more about the world, and about how wide the extremes can be between the highest and lowest standards of living. I share my childhood ideas of wealth here not because they're of any use as an objective definition of what's rich--I think they speak more to the opposite point of how relative this can be--but because they probably tell you something about me, my class, and my perceptions, once upon a time. As such, this may be a useful example of what we writers should probably know about our characters. What do you think of as markers of wealth? What do your characters think?
How'd you get your clothes clean? he finally asked."
--Nick Flynn, The Reenactments
This passage made me think about the assumptions we make about living, and standards of living, and what we think of as rich and poor. To some people, you're rich if you have your own pair of shoes. To others, you're not rich unless you have multiple dwellings and vehicles and investments. I think we all have our own definitions, but rarely compare notes with one another. At some point, I became aware of my own assumptions about what's rich and what's poor, and realized that they were not universal but personal definitions.
My grandparents worked in food service, auto repair, and a print shop. My father made the transition to office work, and then to management. I grew up as a middle-class American, at a time when middle-class families were just beginning to be able to have more than one car, bathroom, and TV set (the TV being the only electronic gadget most such families owned then, other than probably a stereo). We never had to worry about where the next meal was coming from, but luxuries were rare: planned and saved for. Growing up, I assumed a person was rich if he or she hired someone to clean the house or take care of the lawn; had anything that could be called "investments," a "trust," or an "inheritance;" owned a vacation home; or attended a private school. And then there were little details, such as ordering room service, which I thought was the most luxurious thing ever. You saw people do it on TV all the time, but I was never allowed to do it when my family stayed at a hotel. (I got most of my ideas about how rich people lived from TV, books, and movies.)
Since forming these impressions, biases, and assumptions, I've learned a little more about the world, and about how wide the extremes can be between the highest and lowest standards of living. I share my childhood ideas of wealth here not because they're of any use as an objective definition of what's rich--I think they speak more to the opposite point of how relative this can be--but because they probably tell you something about me, my class, and my perceptions, once upon a time. As such, this may be a useful example of what we writers should probably know about our characters. What do you think of as markers of wealth? What do your characters think?
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