Children of Privilege

I received a note from an acquaintance the other day, asking if her daughter could use us as an emergency resource while she is briefly here to interview at a local medical school. I said yes, because I like being able to do things like that. I rarely get the opportunity; letting the neighbor's kids come here if they can't get into their own home is about the extent of it.

This woman and I 'met' via email some time ago when I dropped her a line to ask about something she'd been quoted as saying regarding medical technology. A fairly lively correspondence sprang up, but after about six months I believe she decided that I was of no use to her, being neither of her state, profession, social status, or religion, and not sufficiently interesting in my own right, so that our nascent friendship plummeted and hissed out like a lit match tossed into the Pacific Ocean. Now, I drop her a short note about every six weeks or so, on average, usually about medicine; she responds to about every fourth one -- slightly more if its medical, and slightly less if I'm asking about her family. I was surprised to get the request for her daughter, but I know that it's not going to translate into - well, anything. I'm simply a resource. Happy to oblige.

(My wife once asked why I keep writing to her, given all of this, and the best I could say was that I'm taken by the intricacies of what she does for a living (she's a specialized doctor, and I like knowing medical trivia), plus, I like bright people, generally. After a moment, I added 'Pathetic, huh?' No, she said, slowly. As long as you keep in mind, she added, that she's not a friend, and almost certainly not going to be. Yeah, I know that, I said, reluctantly.)

This morning, I glanced out and noticed that the fog is slowly lifting. I turned to my wife and said 'The fog's dissipating; must be the golden radiance of someone alighting here from California'. We both laughted, because we're amused by the idea of this woman's daughter coming here to attend medical school. We're sure that this is a 'safety school' for her, as the idea of someone who's lived a life of ease -- not an easy life; she's an MIT graduate, and therefore accomplished in her own right -- but a life of sunshine and perpetual warmth, coming to live in Pennsylvania -- and in Hershey, of all places, not even Pittsburgh or Philadelphia -- well, its a funny image. (Probably about the same as if we picked up and moved to the Golden State. You'd see us on the boardwalk in black socks and Bermuda shorts saying Guhnarly, dewd! ) Not to imply, incidentally, that the local med school is a Podunk U; they're renowned for the work that they do. Its just that there are a lot of med schools that are renowned for what they do, and many of them are in much more cosmopolitan places.

It made us think briefly of what it must be like to routinely inhabit those rarefied social strata. Does she know, we wondered, that she is a child of privilege? Or does she no more realize that than we do? Two years ago, I was thinking about what I earned at IBM, and I thought gee, I really don't earn that much -- its two thirds of what I did at EDS, after all. I realized, abstractly, that what I earned was half again what the national average income is, and even a bit more for the local average, but that didn't make an impact, as the only incomes that I knew were what I earned, and what my wife earned. While I suspected that if my relatives know what we earned, and owned, they'd be envious, we didn't think it was all that remarkable. It was, after all, simply what we were used to.

Probably the same with her. I think she's most likely worked for what she's got; she just started at a higher level than most. She's used to having professional and medical contacts through her mother, all over the country; used to the lifestyle of one of the country's most famous zip codes; used to being able to jet off to Belgium, France, Hawaii, Australia. Thats not abnormal, she'd think. It's just the way things are.