My life is complicated. Financially. I grew up in a regular old middle-class family. I had a step-mom and a dad. My siblings and I never had to worry about getting food on the table or clothes on our backs, but I knew we weren’t wealthy by any means. We lived in a smallish suburban home with I don’t know how many pets. I know my dad sacrificed a lot to let me have those pets, but he never let it show that he was struggling.
Starting my sophomore year of high school, I moved in with my mom. She was single at the time as she had been for a while. We lived in a very small two bedroom apartment. We did worry about getting food on the table and clothes on my back. We worried about school supplies and the phone bill, the rent. We were happy, though. We were together after having spent such a long time apart.
My mom found this nice (kind of strange) guy on the internet my junior year. Things moved pretty fast after that. My senior year of high school, we both moved into his home. It was a PALACE compared to what I was used to.
Starting my freshman year of college, I decided to go to this state school down in Texas. I ended up transferring because I was so stressed out about not having a truly decided major and we were taking out these huge loans that I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay back in a million years. Okay, maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic, but we were dropping a boatload of money on this college and I was terrified of my debt.
Entering into my sophomore year of college, something I never thought would happen actually did. My mom got married to the above-mentioned guy she’d met online. I was thrilled for her. Not as thrilled as I was about to be. Come to find out, he had decided to take care of my tuition from there on out.
Now, I’ve been told there’s a stark difference between kids who grow up rich and kids who grow up poor. I like to think I’m the best of all worlds, but maybe these people aren’t necessarily wrong. Between the kids I know who grew up worrying about what the next paycheck would cover and the kids who got BMWs for the birthdays, I do notice a little bit of a contrast.
Just because I didn’t grow up rich doesn’t mean I can’t act like a spoiled brat at times. There is a certain age-defying maturity that comes with being not-so-well-off that I’ve noticed, however. The kids I’ve seen that grow up getting everything they want seem to think, at times, the whole world will be offered to them as soon as they step out on their own. This is not to say that there aren’t exceptions or that each individual is not different. I’m just making a generalization.
Maybe I’m wrong, though.
Maybe there isn’t an overall difference between the rich and the poor. Maybe what we see should only be taken at face value. All I can say for certain is that we are all human beings with facets of ourselves that others see, and other facets that most will never get a glimpse of. Be kind to each other.
I can’t speak for the poor or the rich. I don’t really know what I am, except to know that I am lucky. I have a mother and a father who ended up kind of liking me as a human being. I have family that was not always family that I’ve grown to love as though they were my flesh and blood.
I have gotten riches in the form of love, and many, many people are not nearly so fortunate. So, are the well-to-do so very different from the not-so? Does it matter? You decide.
