I Had This Friend in Elementary and Middle School
He was a total dork and nobody liked him, but my mom thought he was pretty cool so she encouraged me to hang out with him and I did and we got along and had a lot of fun together. We were in Boy Scouts together and went to the same church and in the end, it turned out we had a lot in common and built up a little core group of friends that (of course) imploded upon our introduction to the social weirdness of High School (we went from a middle school with about 800 students to a high school with about 3000.)
It was clear to me that his family didnât have much money. Their house was run down, their cars were ancient, they lived in a not-great part of town. This had no influence on how I felt about them. My family has always been well-off and my parents never wanted me to only hang out with kids that were like me. But it did strike me as weird that his dad had a cell phone.Â
This was the early 90s or late 80s, so a cell phone was a huge extravagance. Seeing a cell phone in his 70â˛s VW made no sense. It was like seeing a farmer with a Rolex. So I brought it up with my mom one day. I donât know how it came up, but I told her the dad was stupid for wasting money on a cell phone when they didnât have much money to go around for the family.Â
She gave me a Mom look. A fiery, terrifying, majestic Mom look that immediately terrified me.
âWhy do you think he might have a phone?â
âFor calling people and stuff.â
âHe has a phone for work. His work pays for it, they need to get a hold of him quickly.â
She told me that his job was repairing broken stuff for movie theaters and restaurants which donât want to wait around for next Tuesday before the refrigerator turns back on, so he was pretty much always driving around and always on call.
âThink about that next time you judge a person who has less than you. You never know everything about other peopleâs lives.â
It was really unpleasant. It was one of those moments when my mother could have decided to go easy on me and to be kind and understanding and think âWell, he didnât know, so why make him feel bad.â Instead she was like, âYou need to feel bad now. Feel bad, child, because otherwise why will you ever change?â
So thank you to my mom for always helping me be betterâŚevery day of my life so far.
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