This is a convoluted little straight forward story. We moved to our present location in 2009, and shortly after, to comply with the law and necessity, I enrolled my children in the schools according to the zoning guidelines set forth for our location. My next to youngest daughter began attending the designated elementary school that fall and thought that she had made a friend. In the meantime, I bought a wonderful $800 or $900 truck, give or take a little due to taxes and various fees. The main thing that made my truck wonderful in my eyes was that it served the purposes of the time and I didn't owe a dime for it. I nicknamed this truck the Yellow Duck truck because it was indeed a big yellow monster which usefully hauled a substantial load of rubbish off for my mother, and was also useful for hauling purchased goods of various other sorts. I didn't think much about the impact of the vision of my useful and unencumbered truck on the minds of others. Indeed, it didn't concern them, because no one else was using it but me. One day, I gave my daughter permission to go home and play with her newly acquired friend with the understanding that I would pick her up at a later appointed time. Great, you say-no big deal! I showed up at the appointed time in my Yellow Duck truck, parked, and went in to the friend's residence upon invitation to socialize a smidgen and get my kid. Little did I realise the impact that my Yellow Duck truck would have on her new friendship! The friend's mother seemed O.K. on the surface, though she was inclined to talk about a neighbor that had allegedly abandoned her family for a greater fixation with some form of illegal drug, and she seemed gracious enough as she said goodbye to us as we left. Later, my daughter wanted to invite this friend over to our house. O.K. with me, I said which is what I always say because there is nothing more joyful than a house full of happy children. Well, the time came for the friend to arrive and she didn't and no reason was given for the no show either. Not then, and not now. Over the years of living here, I have finally figured out the reasoning behind such rude behavior: I don't play the socioeconomic status game the way a large number of people that consider themselves affluent do in this area. When that woman saw my Yellow Duck truck, it didn't gibe with her artificial notions of status and power, and thus social acceptability. Evidently, she assumed that I was 'poor' and thus somehow inferior. Some people just can't let go of the notion that a gauche display of expensively overpriced material acquisitions is an indicator of quality and human goodness. I tend to think in the opposite direction. True quality is modest and compassionate. True quality doesn't attempt to exert power through the purchase of fleeting material possessions. True quality does not condemn for the lack of material possessions, or for the lack of desire to purchase similar material possessions. I am glad that those people I mentioned earlier are no longer in our lives due to their own lack of mental development and rudeness and that my daughter now has friends of true quality. I don't think that I am poor in the least bit imaginable. After all, I am sitting here writing to you. Can you see what I'm getting at?
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