" Friends With Money "

A funny read a few days after listening to a "disadvantaged" teen sorting through her Yahoo! [junk] mail looking for responses to some recent job applications speaking aloud to herself affirming she'd like a credit card whereupon the clinician at the site tried to get her to see why credit cards + joblessness + adolescence were a bad mix. And, this blog post somehow relates to a discovery, in the same week, that a college acquaintance named Vibe and summers in Key West -- because he can; all that from an old Vibe that I wasn't sure why I hadn't tossed but which called me to start reading after I'd finally figured out how to cable correctly the DVD recorder in the kitchen. Yep, it takes me about a year to hook up any new technology we acquire. We have more DVD players than people living here.

There are two laptops in our household (XP and OS X) and one desktop (W2K) mostly situated/isolated for the child to surf and to play any of his variations of Zoo Tycoon; all of these PCs are wirelessly taking advantage of our 24/7 DSL connection in our tiny 5-room apartment on the 3rd floor of a triple decker in Dorchester, MA. Furthermore, there are 2 non-networked pre-OS 8 macs in our kitchen and dining room with educational software for the child and that I use for music listening. Technically, we possess six televisions although only three (each with cable and some not-so-current game box attached) are in regular use.

What is money, exactly? Access to better choices?

One of the female teens I was teaching about computers asked me why I didn't "hock" all my technology and get my car fixed. And, at the site for my other job one of the male teens with whom I worked asked if I was rich--a query prompted by my pulling out my digital camera from my fanny pack.

I'm clearly not rich, but some of my friends are. Maybe. Some people with whom I'd even conversed in college probably are judging by the movie deals I read about in the media but my closest friends are across the spectrum but generally range from artists with jobs of some sort (usu. part-time or grad school-based) to college profs. In between, you'd find an eclectic bunch including a personal trainer, a school psychologist, consultants, a college counselor at a private school, and some who've likely inherited and already earned more money than I'll probably ever see in my lifetime. C'est la vie. Meanwhile, I'm barely employed by an assortment of NPOs. and where we live our 8-year son thinks bad things are routine to the extent that he won't play in the huge Ronan Park around the corner.