Despite my early
indoctrination into one of the finest schools of sarcasm (under the expert
tutelage of my dad, sister, and aunt), I have always had the awful tendency to
take things too literally. Nowadays, I practically see sarcasm and hyperbole
coalesce from mouths in a string of italics ("No, really, we love your
blog…"), but there was a time when I would take snide remarks and idioms
as the gospel truth and create a remarkably vivid mental picture- at least for
a kid whose honor roll status was constantly under the sole threat of Mrs. K,
the hippie art teacher.
For instance, I
almost started this piece with the phrase, "when I was knee-high to a
grasshopper…" but that phrase always makes me think of myself as a fetus
or as that TV-loving kid on meth from Willy Wonka (post microwave debacle).
And, hand to God, for the first 12 years of my life, I thought the ending to
the phrase "People in glass houses..." was "… shouldn't walk
around naked." Because if I lived in a glass house, that would be my first
thought. And let's be real; that makes more sense anyway.
I had one of these
long-term misunderstandings with the phrase "born with a silver spoon in
your mouth." To be honest with you, I have only in the last year or so
come to realize what is meant by the phrase that my blog's banner has drawn
inspiration from (yeah, that random picture it has a purpose). Yet again, I
took the phrase too literally and formed an all too realistic mental image.
What bothered me the most was how a kid ends up with a spoon while in utero to
begin with, and how the birth happens with the utensil protruding from the
kid's mouth. You can fill in the rest of the mental images, but as someone who
has already had such images let me recommend against it. Vehemently.
I knew the phrase
meant to be born more fortunate than others with exceptional affluence and
opportunities because of your family, but I never understood how having a spoon
in your mouth when you were born could be a reflection of this. To me, it just
seemed like a choking hazard.
I always failed to
make the connection that "born" wasn't literally "at the moment
of birth," but rather alludes to "being reared from a young
age." The kid wasn't a gestational marvel, but was simply being fed his
Gerber's (or whatever the rich-person equivalent of Gerber's is... Gerbèr's?)
with a silver spoon. I know for most of
you this is all "well, duh" territory, but you have to understand
that when I hear a phrase I immediately create a mental image, and that mental
image becomes as real to me as what I see with my eyes, so this reality that I
create is not easily upended, no matter how absurd I know it to be.
But this saying is
still absurd, isn't it? I mean, I only know a couple of people with any
pure-silver utensils, and they sure as hell aren't breaking them out for use on
the pre-masticated mush of baby food. The kid doesn't care that it's eating
from something of monetary and ornamental significance; the kid is just
thinking "I wonder if I can vomit and
poop at the same time!"
I suppose that's the
point though, to highlight the perceived absurdity of the wealthy. The phrase
is clearly gilded with malice towards the well-to-do because the middle and
lower classes often hold the wealthy in contempt- especially the children of the
wealthy who will grow up to be affluent for no reason other than who their
mommy and daddy are. This is especially true right now, as the world is still
teetering on the edge of this economic crisis and the U.S. enters election
season. People are frustrated with CEOs' "golden parachutes," another
phrase of absurd decadence that makes no sense to me (if you have a sheet of
gold strapped to you, you're going to
hit the ground even harder than barebacked I'd imagine). People are sick of
politicians who are "disconnected" from their constituents because of
their wealth- Romney's two biggest fires to put out right now involve his
infamous vacation where he strapped his dog to his roof (people are making this
out to be proof-positive that Romney is disconnected from us due to wealth) and
his shockingly meager tax bracket due to the legislative loophole that he's an
investor, not a worker.
The wealthy have
plenty to say back, usually with the themes of jealousy, stupidity, socialism,
free-loading, Reaganomics, and hippies peppered in remarks to their detractors.
So now we find ourselves in a fierce class warfare, marked by OWS and the "99%,"
and so much derision that you would think we were living in feudal Europe, not
one of the most prosperous and socially mobile societies in global history.
Maybe this metaphor
isn't about the rich kid 's exorbitant lifestyle. Maybe this metaphor is about
us, our society as a whole. The generations before us built up a great and
prosperous society, founded on noble and auspicious principles, and defended
this society through two noble world wars, and because of all of their
achievements and sacrifices we now have a sense of entitlement. Entitlement to
a high-paying job, entitlement to a suburban 4-bedroom house with 1.86 kids and
an SUV, entitlement to whatever new gadget is out this quarter. We think we are
entitled to all of these things because for so long they have simply been given
to us. So now that they are being taken away, we are having a temper-tantrum
because our spoon is no longer silver.
Our entitlement was
fed even more by our addiction to credit. My grandpa never had anything he
didn't earn first (including his freedom). His generation never had a home
equity crisis, or a credit crisis, because they took what they earned and
nothing more. By contrast, when we weren't given
what we were "entitled" to, we took it on credit- plastic for silver.
That's called alchemy, and it isn't real.
Our world isn't in a
financial crisis because of lazy workers or greedy heads of corporations; in
one form or another those things have been around for centuries in far worse
proportions. Our world is in a crisis because we are spoiled children that never
grew up. We're in this because we're all vain, selfish, and whiny, and we had
better turn our backs from the decadence of silver and the temptation of
plastic if we are ever going to be prosperous or happy ever again.