When I was in my mid 30s driving back from Florida after closing out my dead mom’s apartment and so forth, I picked up a hitchhiker.

He was a rich person parasite kind of. He would work as a bartender where daughters of wealthy families partied. He charmed them and became their boyfriend, and that’s how he survived. He was smart and industrious with clever business ideas so he charmed the daughter’s dads as well kind of. When he was tired of grifting them he just disappeared. I picked him up at the start of his latest disappearance.

So anyway, yeah, during a 10 drive he clued me in to how wealthy people are offered services regular folks don’t even conceive of.

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There was this new kid at (public) middle school we kinda started feeling sorry for. He was always dressed nice. Had an excuse for PE. Had a special lunch from the cafeteria because of dietary needs. Turns out his parents were super specialized doctors or surgeons or something. After a couple of months he said he could have one of person over at a time after school. I went over first on my skateboard. He had one that he didn’t know how to ride, so he walked. We get to his house and they have this amazing view of the water and mountains. A fucking indoor pool and jacuzzi. Green house in the middle of the entryway with tropical plants. The mom greeted us and makes us leave our skateboards outside, take off our shoes, and told us the house rules. She asked me what my parents did and was just kind of deadeyes when I told her (boring, middle class work). We went to his room that had a goddamn computer in, most households didn’t have anything like that at the time. He had his own private phone line, cable tv, and tons of plastic model cars and planes. He had an RC Car. I was blown away and then he shows me their entertainment room with a giant projector tv, air hockey, a film projector and screen, and a bunch of other shit I can’t remember. I feel like I spent about an hour there before the mom found us and sent me home because they were having dinner? Gee thanks lady, I guess you don’t want the poors coming back for free food. Or your son to have any friends. My other friends went over there (one at a time!) with the same results. Looking back, I guess his parents were trying to research what other kid’s parents might be wealthy enough for their son to hang out with. or maybe for them to entertain/socialize. It was pretty gross.

I was in a contemporary fine art market and I just hear visitors mentioning about owning a hotel in such a casual way, like how one would talk about owning a car.

I was working in a restaurant and one day a regular invited us to his place for after work drinks. He opened the front door into a monumental hallway with beautiful winding stairs and a large mosaic monogram with his initials on the floor.

We went into the main living area with a professionally decked out open kitchen, a 20 person dining table and a seating area with 4 large Chesterfields. The whole room is filled with art and antiques.

He asked me if I wanted to pick a few bottles of wine because of my good taste ( I’m a trained sommelier). He then guided me to his library and opened a secret door that led into the wine cellar.

Every large winehouse in the world was represented and he insisted on picking whatever I wanted. The sheer amount of stacks of Mouton Rotschild premier Cru, Tenuta Dan Guido - Sassicaia… We opened 4 bottles that would’ve cost about 10.000 euros together. No sweat.

He told us that despite the nice kitchen he never cooks. He goes to restaurants every day and on the weekends he hires top chefs to cook for his guests.

Then he asked us if we would like to go and have lunch in Milan, the next day (I’m from Belgium). He chartered a heli and had extra space for 3 persons.

He’s a modest guy. Rides his bike everywhere and makes his money selling real estate. He only sells high value property like castles and works one day a week. He’s not extremely talented but admitted he’s just lucky.

I realized that to become rich, you need money. Whether it’s your own or someone else’s doesn’t matter, you just need a lot.

A very rich friend of mine decided that they wanted to “take time off” and travel the world. She called her travel agent (10 pm on a Saturday) and got them to build a world trip by Monday afternoon. That Friday she got on a plane and just left for 9 months of travel. There was never a sense of this being a big deal or extravagant but more of a quirky whim.

It was then that it occurred to me that while we live on the same planet we don’t live in the same world.

In fifth grade at a private school in Florida, I told a kid our Apple IIe didn’t have a joystick.

A few months later he was flabbergasted I didn’t have one already.

I hadn’t even asked my parents for one. It wasn’t enough of a priority for me. (When I did get one a few years later it was with my money.)

We had a computer at home and were definitely not poor. But I stood out as the relatively poor kid there.

When I was in the second grade, I went to a classmates birthday party that they invited only some of the other kids in my class and I was lucky to go. Growing up we were pretty poor but still happy, so I was dressed in old good will clothes. After the party, I overheard the mom tell my dad don’t bring me around anymore because we weren’t in the same financial class as them.

At the time, the “Supermarket Scanner” story painted a picture that, while blown out of proportion, is a truth about the way some people interact with the world when they have money and power. They don’t see the same things that I do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarket_scanner_moment

This guy I knew came from a wealthy family and would squirt half a bottle of ketchup on to a separate plate for one helping of fries. He couldn’t understand why we had a problem with him wasting so much of it.

I had a temporary relationship with a rich semi-celebrity and lent a thumbdrive and they took it assuming I was just giving it to them… in fact they assume a lot of what people do ,paid and not paid, is just in service to them and cannot accurately gauge what to do in interaction not involving servitude.

They also had a bowl of change they didn’t want assuming just giving it to someone such as myself was ‘more money than I’ve ever seen’. …like they don’t understand the difference between homelessness and regular working people on a wage. They just assume we all blur in together.

Long before I started getting hungry. Now that I am hungry it is time to eat the rich.

I’ve yet to realize this. The majority of rich people I know don’t come off that way. The exceptions aren’t the majority just because they’re in the spotlight more due to the damage they do cause.

When someone couldn’t understand why I got my tooth pulled instead of getting a root canal. (It’s way cheaper to get it pulled here.)