Welcome to my happily ever after...
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status substitution
Oh dear, it's already Friday. This week has gone by rather quickly. It's looking like things here at the hospital may be winding up soon as I'm running out of things to do, and I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about that. It's become familiar here, and the idea of packing up and going to yet another temp job gives me a funny feeling in my stomach.
Have you ever noticed how people in an effort to impress people use the brand name of their possessions rather than just call it a "car" or a "purse"? For example, I have a friend that instead of saying "Let me go get my car" he will say "Let me go get the BMW". Barf. That book Generation X by Douglas Coupland called it status substitution, and thought that it was an ingenuous description.
I'm not impressed by $. I grew up with some mega-rich kids and I learned that truly rich people usually don't talk about their wealth. (Unless you're an A-gay).
For example, Lori, my friend and former coworker, has more money that she knows what to do with. In fact, I've never mentioned it, but she and her husband are the ones that bought the "Enron mansion", the huge house that Andrew Fastow and his wife were in the process of building when the shit hit the fan. It's something like 12000 square feet, and if I remember correctly they plunked down $4 million for it. They also found another $4 million house around the corner from the first, and they couldn't decide which one they liked, so they just bought both. Since then they sold the other house and moved into the Enron house (after they fixed all the damages after the disgruntled ex-Enron employee unsuccessfully tried to burn it down).
I went over there once and Lori fucking cracks my ass up. They are too cheap to get cable TV, a cell phone, caller ID, or even call waiting. They've been living there like 6 months now and are sitting on her husband's old couch from college, and their 13 inch TV is on an old table and has rabbit ears to get reception. The living room alone is like 3000 square feet and has imported blue limestone floors that are heated, yet their old brown velour couch and 13 " TV are the only things in the room. I love it.
I've been to the grocery store with Lori before, and she will bicker with the salesgirl if she won't take a 25 cent coupon. I guess the truly rich watch their money. Who knew?
Lori just says that she hasn't had time to look for furniture, yet I remember at their old house that they were in since at least 1998 had no furniture either. Things like that just aren't important to them because they don't care what people think. The only "Karen Walker" moment I've ever seen her have was once when she came to work on a Monday and told me her husband bought a new car over the weekend. When I asked what he bought, she said a BMW. When I asked which BMW, she told me a 700 series. I then said "Goodness...I can't imagine what a car note on a 700 series BMW would be!", she responded by saying "Honey, when you buy a car like that, you don't finance it...you write a check." Ha!
Lori is the bomb. Not once has she ever flaunted her money around anyone that I know of.
I'm much more impressed by someone that walks down the street and you can tell they have an air of confidence to themselves. I can think of many people, both men and women, that have not been considered classically attractive, however I found them to be because of their confidence and the way that they carried themselves. In Lori's case, the bitch, she has both the confidence and the cash.
Oh yeah, I'm not going to Austin this weekend after all. Tasha called and asked if I'd consider driving my car on Saturday, and when I asked why, she told me because since 5 people were going, they wouldn't all fit into her VW Beetle. Very true, and riding in the backseat of her car makes me sick, even when I'm the only one back there. So I told her I thought given the circumstances with my dad and that I didn't particularly care to drive (especially after driving my car through all that water earlier this week), I thought I'd bow out of this one. Carlos actually seemed relieved that I wasn't going...partly because he knew I wasn't going to enjoy going out to a club that night. I avoid dance clubs like the plague, and now he can go and dance with his shirt off and have fun without having his mother (me) scream at him from the edge of the dance floor to "fucking put his clothes back on".
This means that I have all day Saturday and Sunday to myself. Woo-hoo!
9:32 a.m. - 2003-11-21
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