Yesterday one of my favorite friends from college and I sat in Rittenhouse Square drinking wine out of coffee cups all afternoon and reminiscing the good times. A few other alums were sprinkled around the park and it felt like nothing had changed. I ended up changing my flight a day later so that I could spend the evening watching the Eagles game and pretending to still be in the soft comfortable care of college. My friend happens to have a job and be pretty self sufficient, but for the fact that she decided not to go to work today in an attempt at a repeat of yesterday, the boozing will commence soon after this post.
A boy I was good friends with and his girlfriend sat with us for a while and I told them about this blog - the boy is definitely my target audience, although he kept repeating randomly throughout the conversation that he thinks he would be able to survive in the wilderness and on his own. Sorry, but ha, no.
Out of no where this random chick comes over and asks me if I'm writing a blog about rich kids in poor neighborhoods. Being polite to a very rude stranger I explained the blog and she goes on this whole rant about how she's homeless and have I ever spent a night on the streets. No, I answered laughing, does it look like I've ever spent a night on the street? At first I felt like an ass hole, but this girl was sitting with a boy wearing a pink polo and she had nice cloths on...there is no way their Di Bruno Brother's sandwich wrapper was the product of someone's starvation. I started to pry a bit: she said she was freezing, I pointed out her faux fur coat; she asked if I was one of those rich kids, I said I represent them; she said she was buddhist and something about faith, I wear buddhist accessories and jewelry and said 'yeah, it's fab'; she asked for some change, I gave her a dollar and said I hope bad karma doesn't bite her in the ass...well I said that after she had walked away, I mean there was a good chance that girl could kick my ass.
The whole interaction was so strange, and my friend and his girlfriend sat frozen throughout the whole encounter, never saying a word. Yeah right you could hack in on the streets - you couldn't even handle the harsh reality of the high class homeless. What this story aims to teach is that I'm a generous person because contrary to my Jewish heritage, I believe in karma. A lot of rich kids are so stingy, especially certain JAP's who refuse to throw an extra five bucks from their Balenciaga wallets toward tip for a $20 salad. And though I may be painfully spoiled, I still understand the importance of helping those less fortunate, and by help I mean give money that was never actually earned by me to those who never tried hard enough to earn it themselves. I always give nice, name brand clothes to friends who I know can't afford to buy them and I always offer to pay for pedi's when I need the company of someone who's strapped for cash. You could say I buy my friends, but I just figure they will pay it forward or return the favor in their own way.
I just hope my mitzvah proves worthy of good karma when it comes to getting a job. It's already come back in the form of an email from Gilt saying that an item I had put myself on the wait list for is now available to me for purchase - but I will decline. I need to start being more responsible with the little spending cash I have. No more passing out dolla bills to strangers (strippers and the homeless alike) and no more purchases regardless of how great a bargain they may be. Maybe someday soon I will be able to say I could hack it completely on my own or in the wilderness, but I never actually want that to be a reality I have to face.
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