Not my old friends, but my wife’s childhood best friend.
It’s nice to see them pick up where they left off and it’s nice to really get to spend time with the woman my wife always talks about, and her husband, who seems nice as well, and has quite the tragic backstory.
Of course, my wife presented me as the rich kid, which you know, I’m not. I’ve lived more in poverty than not and my parents didn’t really start making a lot of money until I was well into my teens.
I spent much of my childhood in awe of my cousin, who had the complete Star Wars figurine collection, including the Darth Vader head carrying case, while I had a basic Princess Leah and Luke, plus Chewy, which was cool. (And, they had cable. We didn’t have cable. We had antenna.)
I didn’t even have Han. No Landspeeder or X-Wing.
We were poor, kids.
(Kidding, of course – we were comfortably lower-middle to middle and then upper-middle, so my childhood was mostly a matter of restraint – two working parents, comfortable, without excess.)
Anyway, I went to a dirt school, and most of the people I knew and hung out with didn’t come from money, and the ones that did were like our family, stable income, some extra, nothing dramatic.
Normal kids.
So, when people say that I’m a rich kid, it bugs me, because they see how well my parents have done for themselves, but they see it from the later point of view, where that money was made largely after we were already teenagers, or out of the house.
My mom cut my hair with a bowl on my head, for crap’s sake. We never had brand name shit (and I still don’t give a fuck about that), except for one long sleeve Vuarnet shirt, the kind that changed colour when it got wet, which made sweating real awkward.
Fancy, we were not.
Target: 900 words
Written: 815 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, Jules Verne
Comics: 100 Bullets 13-16
Music: Neil Young Essentials, Neil Young