7. Ironically, a great childhood doesn’t much prepare you for adulthood.
I was raised by my great grandmother. She was well to do, active well into her 80’s and her world revolved around me. Ballet, gymnastics, all the music classes I could fit in my schedule. I had a menagerie of pets. Christmases were obscene. She catered to my every whim as a child.
Now that I’m an adult and my wonderful Gram has passed, I’ve learned that what I had was really unique. The world does not wait on me, I’m not special to everyone. I struggle with entitlement and narcissistic tendencies. It’s isolating at times and I miss her.
8. This woman had a reality double-check.
My parents went bankrupt. Twice. Went from private school to having cars and the house repossessed. Yay.
9. She was so rich she didn’t even know she was rich.
At 20, when I started dating my now husband. He was raised by a single mom who worked three jobs and they still barely got by, while my mom was a SAHM and my dad was/is a successful in his line of work.
Husband and I went to high school together. At the beginning of every school year my parents would easily drop $15k on me and my sister for school clothes; my husband would go with our HS secretary to get clothes that were paid for by the school district. I didn’t even know that was a thing….
Edit: Yes, I am aware and I agree that this is a stupid amount of money to spend on clothing. To clarify, a large portion of that amount was spent on designer items/accessories.
10. A very ap-peel-ing story. (Orange you glad we made that pun?)
Military bootcamp. Wanted to eat an orange, didn’t know how to peel one. Slyly waited for someone else to start peeling before emulating him. End up with a badly squashed, untidily peeled orange ball that tasted like sour reality. BOOM. Evolved.
11. Not broke, but still woke.
Not sure if this is a serious question, but here’s a serious answer.
When I moved out of my hometown for college, it was an absolute culture shock. I met other students who couldn’t go to their dream schools because of how much it cost so they had to go in-state. They didn’t eat out every other day. They bought secondhand clothes. Some had never travelled out of the country, some never even out of the state. Some were driving their parents’ first cars. That shit blew my mind. This is how the rest of the 99% of the country lives.
I come from a filthy rich background, but I work hard to hide it so that you can’t tell. I dress normally, I don’t really talk about my background, I try to buy stuff on sale.
Sometimes it shows in ways that I can’t help. I’d never seen shitty cars before going to college. I don’t know how to drive cars with poor handling, and I always forget to turn off the headlights because I’ve never driven a car without automatic lights. I don’t know how much anything costs because it doesn’t matter. I’ll still buy it anyway. I also don’t really value money. $100 just isn’t a big deal to me, but I know it means a lot to others, so I don’t mind giving it to friends who are in need. But if you don’t look too closely at my habits, you can’t tell. And that was a conscious decision that I’ve made.
I’m grateful for never having to worry about money, and I likely never will. But I don’t want to go back to my hometown because I think the lifestyle is unhealthy. There’s so much entitlement, and the worst part is how rich people think that money defines your worth. I’ve seen them look at people with less money with such disdain, like their value as a person is less since they don’t have as much money. It’s disgusting. And I don’t want to be associated with that kind of person.
I also loathe the comments that come with it like “if I were rich like you…” and I put an end to those immediately if they come up. I don’t like being treated differently because of how much money I have, and I won’t treat you differently for how much money you have. We are both people, and we are both worth something.
12. You can’t be rude, dude.
Getting told “You’re a very rude person.” by an instructor at music summer camp after 11th grade. It was a huge reality check for me and really changed how I interacted with people.