"What did you think was normal till your learned otherwise?"
Redditors who grew up filthy rich up-voted comments...
Taking trips overseas constantly. I remember being so surprised in elementary school that my friends had never been to Europe.
I thought until the start of high school that a 100$ bottle of wine was cheap. Expensive ones ares several thousands after all.
Going on ski holiday every year. Living in Germany, where the alps are just a two hour's drive away, but still flying to western Canada for skiing at whistler mountain
John Travolta told a cute story about his daughter once: they had to fly commercial once and she was shocked, incredulous, and asked, 'daddy, who are all these people on our plane?!' She thought everyone had their own 757.
I spent my late teens and early twenties butlering for a very very wealthy (not billionaires but not far off) family. They had 2 school age kids that I would drop off in the morning. The older (7 maybe 8 t the time) of the two was amazed to learn that I didn't have a holiday home to go to when I took time off.
15 comments:
I grew up filthy rich. It wasn't until I was 13 that I learned that some Americans couldn't marry other Americans because of anti-miscegenation laws.
I thought it was normal for Audubon to love birds so much that followed them around and studied them with intense detail and that love for birds, adoration for their form, and for their movement, for their song, combined with extraordinary artistic ability beginning with botanical painting, and further combined with unusually fine eye detail and memory brings it all back internally and reproduced them in his studio.
When I learned he shot them I was stunned and rather old for such a basic realization. Old enough to be laughed at when it was obvious I was crushed. And further when I learned he shot them by the hundreds as if they are nothing then I was destroyed.
I still haven't recovered.
Because Audubon along with being a fine artist is also a bird killer of the greatest magnitude most discriminating indiscriminate sort. A freak. And best he just kept his mitts off birds altogether.
I thought it was normal that everyone's dad could draw what they are explaining.
My friend's dad was explaining clutches and gear differentials and not doing very well. I suggested he draw us a picture and he's all, "what? what? what?" The dude was huge muscular mesomorph, the type you don't want to piss off. But up to then I thought everyone's dad could just draw what they're thinking.
I grew up thinking that St. Louis always had the worst team in baseball.
And I thought everyone could see and recognize the same colors, shapes and pattern relationships that I saw.
Even now, in a painting class with 7 adults, all painting similar objects, using similar palettes, I'm continually awed and surprised by the differences in perception revealed that seem to involve more than different levels of technical skill and practice.
Back in the early-mid '80s, I had this job. I had no car, so I walked to and from work, and that walking sometimes involved doing it in day and sometimes in night. Regardless, I walked something like not all that much, just a couple-so miles either way, from the house I shared with a number of unrelated people (as I had done for much of the previous years, doing college, because that's how I managed to find places to live the rent/overhead for which I could manage). I was used to it. Anyway. There came a day, not all THAT long after, in which I was offered a promotion, but the catch was: I had to have a car, a basically reliable car even though a very used car, because the promotion involved having to drive from place to place. If I wanted that promotion, I had to figure out a way to afford a car, even a very used car, the purchase of which would cost more than the raise connected with the promotion from the git-go, and its maintenance, insurance and likely break-down costs thereafter. And I did figure it out, because I was not robot. [TBC]
I was raised to work, and work I did.
[T.K.]
I thought the cups of tokens Mom would hand me were like Monopoly money that kept me entertained at the levered machines while Dad drank at the bar. Only many years later did I remember and realize I'd been playing slot machines. I think that was about the time I began to carry a book with me everywhere.
At the end of the day? It's at an end.
Unless you figure it out in terms of what you can do for yourself, which is what I did with help from people to and for whom I've been grateful from that day to this.
Given Christy's comment, let me interrupt myself in terms of my own point.
By the time I reached 18:
I baby-sat. I also cooked and cleaned.
I mowed a lawn or two (or many). I clipped the edge of lawns with a hand-clipper on my hands and knees, also--though I must say, that was enough for me to choose other choices -- see *up* and *down*. ; )
I washed dishes and pans & etc. in a commercial restaurant business (back before commercial, mechanical dishwashers were required).
I made pizzas, fast and to order, according to my bosses' demands and--because I was so fast--also had enough to time to try and pay attention, at least a little bit, to our customers' individual requests and desires.
I did short-order cook. I was good at it. Including flat-top, fryer & etc. Early multi-tasker, was I, in a worker-bee situation!
I peeled shrimp by the 500s (and from frozen, which led to a lot of bleeding--ask me about that, some other day), and hand-made won-tons by the 100s.
I manned cash registers.
I did some waitressing, though just a bit (remember, we are talking about before I reached age 18) at that time.
There are two things that most make me pissed off in the world:
Charlatans who say that working people are, by definition, ill-educated
and
Charlatans who say that people who got to get educated are, by definition, against working people.
---
Charlatans disgust me, and that disgust is not new to me.
Let me be pointed about this:
If those of you who are upper in your 60s and 70s and whatever aren't willing to look at your own selves, why on earth do you imagine that one such as I (hitting double-nickles this coming Wednesday, March 9,2016) ought, instead of relying on myself, look to you all for leadership?
It's a fair question.
Dontcha think? I wonder.
Post a Comment