Every so often my wonderful work wife Trisha drags me out to some social function or other, like I’m a pet project and she’s studying the effects of enforced recreation on misanthropes. Last night that was to an event for the Junior Achievement organization. I put together some online training for them a while back, so figured this was some kind of thank you for the volunteers, and figured I deserved a free drink as much as the next person, so against my natural tendencies, agreed to go. And on a school night, too!
But instead of the quiet round of cocktails and canapes in a discrete setting I’d led myself to expect, it turned out to be some major fundraiser, with several hundred people in a hangar-sized hall. So much for gently easing me back into polite society. You know it’s a bad sign when you go to check in and pick up your name tag and they ask you if you want to put a credit card on file, for the auctions. We politely declined, hoping they’d think we were just going to pay cash for everything, and scuttled off to the free bar, where we availed ourselves of all the free Coke (no, the soda!) we could handle. We’re such party animals!
The food was alright, and they even had a vegetarian option that wasn’t just what everyone else had with the meat scraped off. Some kind of roasted cauliflower thing. And the dessert was alright, too. There was even free wine – presumably to get people all liquored up and not thinking straight before they start bidding on stuff they don’t really need. I told Trisha she could drink and I’d drive her Porsche back home, but she wasn’t having any of it.
Bruce, at our table, had the winning bid on a day out at some NASCAR event, for which he paid $6,000. I would have been envious, but I was still maxed out on envy from earlier, when he told me that his second home is on a “little island called Nantucket”. Then when he whipped out his Amex Platinum Card to pay for his purchase with the nonchalant air of someone who knows they’re not going to instantly get the “unusually-large purchase detected” alert from Amex, I saw that it was actually made of metal, which just about tipped my jealousy over the edge. I thought they only did that with the black (Centurion) card. Clearly I’m not spending enough on my Platinum Card. Maybe I need to bid on more auction items. As it was, for a moment I thought I’d actually won the NASCAR trip without raising so much as an eyebrow, let alone my hand. The auctioneer thought it was me who had submitted the winning bid, and not Bruce, who was sat next to me. When the winning bid was acknowledged, he bounded off the stage and over to our table, clapped me on the shoulder and said earnestly, “Thank You!”. I wasn’t really paying attention and reflexively said “You’re welcome!” – which is my default answer in case I can actually claim credit for work I haven’t done. When I realized what he was really thanking me for, I nearly pooped myself, thinking “Did I? Did I somehow manage to bid on this without knowing?? WhatdoIdowhatdoIdo?”. Luckily Trisha was able to clarify, once she’d finished laughing at the look of fear and panic on my face.
There was also an auction item of 20 bottles of “quality wine” which would make a “great addition to your wine cellar”. Wine cellar? Bitch, please! If I cleared out some of the leftover takeaways from my fridge I could maybe fit a wine box in it. Does that count? I felt even more out of my element when they announced the final auction item: a week’s vacation at some huge beach house in Florida. So huge that it could “comfortably sleep 28 people”, the auctioneer told us. Several times. It’s not that I’m not the kind of person who wouldn’t enjoy a week in Florida, but I don’t have 27 friends to invite. Not even if I counted my cats. Hell, I don’t think I could even find 27 other people I could tolerate for a whole week. So I guess I’m out on that one.
Still, it was nice to see how the other half lives. Actually, not really. It was more depressing, as I was forced to acknowledge the trail of wrong turns and bad decisions that have led me to where I am today. A few people in attendance received awards for their philanthropic contributions to the Junior Achievement organization. We got to watch a little bio clip of each of them, and that just made me feel like I’ve done nothing with my life. These people fought their way into their chosen careers, maneuvered themselves through several high-powered jobs, breaking barriers and changing lives as they went, before retiring early with enough money to spare to be able to give back generously to society. Meanwhile, I’m still living paycheck to paycheck and trying to figure out when I’ll finally feel like I’m successfully adulting.
But it’s hard to resent them for it. I don’t think any of them came from inherited wealth, and a few of them started with the Junior Achievement program when they were still in school, so it’s clearly an effective program. So congratulations and well done to them. Now, is it too late for me to sign up for JAÂ at 52, and get me some of that giving back they’re all doing?
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