Color Coordination

Walking towards the National Mall in D.C., I found myself eavesdropping on a conversation taking place next to me. A man and his assistant were walking towards Folders Shakespearean library, and with smug posturing he was sharing the trials of leasing a home, now that he had moved back to the States.

“Well, the lease is manageable…$250,000 per year…but we’re having such trouble with the decor. All of my art and furniture is Renaissance era, which just won’t work in such a rustic log cabin, like ours…and the real tragedy is I have $2 million in books just sitting in storage.”

The assistant nodded solemnly, sympathizing with his plight. I bit my tongue and kept walking, reminding myself that I was an ambassador of Belmont, and now was not the time to wage a class war. Still, I was greatly tempted to kick him in the shin until he volunteered to loan his millions in books to any one of the local libraries while he remodeled his home, purchase a new home that matched his decor, or at the very least, quit complaining about it.

I mean, here I am, about to graduate into a terrible economy with little to no job prospects of value, a sizable amount of student debt, and this guy is complaining that his books don’t match his chalet? Didn’t he realize how fortunate he is? Hire me! I’ll read your books so they don’t go to waste! I’m scrambling for a job, and you’re finding it difficult to live without color coordinated decadence?

Never have I been more inspired to engage in civil disobedience, just to call attention to a glaring class divide.
And there I was, a middle class white woman, on a trip around the country on a luxury tour bus, being taught at a graduate level by brilliant professors, complaining that he didn’t realize how lucky he was.