After reading that title, you must think that this article is going to be about sexism as I am a girl who drives a truck, but surprisingly it’s not. It’s about what else people see when they see my truck; they see a privileged, rich white girl who has never worked a day in her life and has “daddy’s money”. Newsflash! You’re wrong! My nice truck has over 236,000 miles on her and was my father’s before it came into my possession. I cannot stand when people assume that I am spoiled rotten, that I’ve never worked, that my father gives me whatever I ask whenever I ask, because it’s far from the truth.
Before you assume that I’m trying to say that I have an incredibly hard life, I’m not, I’m trying to say that my nice truck and my family’s nice cars mean nothing when it comes to our work ethic, means nothing when it came to how I was raised, means NOTHING when it comes to our social class. My family is middle class. My dad has a successful pest control business that he works his butt off every day maintaining. Most of my life my dad went to work at 5am and came home well after 7pm, usually with a shirt either soaked in sweat or spackle. I was raised to knowing and witnessing the definition of hard work because my father would work his butt off every day in the hot sun so my sisters and I could have what he couldn’t as a kid.
I’ll always admit that my sisters and I were/are spoiled but not in the way everyone assumes, we were constantly told no as kids, we got spankings, we had chores, we had to clean up our own messes. If we wanted a toy and it wasn’t our birthday or Christmas, we had to earn it (or make a really good argument on why we needed it, which never worked). I didn’t have a smart phone until my 15th birthday, unlimited texting until my 13th, and didn’t have internet on my phone until the middle of my sophomore year. My oldest sister even longer. My truck has over 236,000 miles on it. It looks nice because my dad takes good care of his cars and so do I. My dad has a z06 Corvette because he has been working his butt off since he was 14 years old, started his business 20+ years ago, and yet still works his ass off every day alongside his few employees. Same goes for my mother, most of my childhood, she always had a part-time job or aided my dad in the office.
I have worked, I was a nanny for a year to two wonderful boys, I sewed costumes for my school, and I work as a receptionist/office manager in my dad’s office (where I don’t get cut any slack just because I’m his daughter), and that doesn’t even include all the hours I spent at barns mucking stalls, tacking horses, sweeping, cleaning, etc. Most of the gas that goes into my gas tank is paid for with money that I, myself, earned. When people find out that I have a nice truck and my dad has a Corvette as well as a Ram Longhorn, they automatically think I can’t do anything for myself. Well, guess what? I know how to change my own oil, change a tire, fix practically anything you put in front of me, and multiple other things most other girls can’t.
So yes, I drive a nice truck.
