Camp Kids
Today we were doing a job for a crazy lady who was moving down the street. As is common the man never shows up--probably at work. Her age was somewhere between 45 and 55. Her husband owns a Burger King, which to me counts as all three strikes against the entire family. They had a daughter and a son; we can tell because the new house has two rooms, one with boxes labeled "David" the other "Jen." Their kids are college aged, I figured this on my own, as I do every day, with a little detective work, sneaking a glance at the family portrait as I passed through the kitchen. It's not difficult, given the parents ages, and the fact that the kids weren't there at all. When we were pulling boxes out of the crawl space of the son's room, (which probably haven't been touched or even thought about since they were put there by the movers who put them in that house) I saw a small wooden tin from a rather prestigious prep school. That's strike four. The blood and sweat of immigrant labor, the disenfranchised, and lower class teenagers who should be in school paid for his soccer and tennis coach and his elite-well-published-budding-young Social Studies teacher.
About midday she mentioned somewhat remorsefully, but proudly how, "My Son's in England and my daughter's in Spain." And it occurred to me, college kids spending summers "working" in foreign countries, or spending semesters "studying" abroad are equivalent to children enrolled in summer camp. Better to have the kids in camp, that way mommy and daddy can fornicate around the house and not worry a whit about the brats for two weeks. Better to have the kids being glorified tourists propped up by the blood and toil of immigrant laborers and lower class losers. I could just imagine them saying how they want to, "experience the world, travel, so I can grow as a person." To travel, to grow, to be propped up, fed by Burger King. The only way for me not to hate these people would be if they came back injured, having endured some horrible car accident, paralyzed from the waist down. Then I'd say, "my how you've grown."
