A Fool and His Money...

So, Bubba and I ended up at this lil' house party on Saturday night, in the home of an acquaintance she'd made. More in the name of fulfilling a coerced promise to attend, than any real burning desire to be there, we figured we'd make a token appearance towards the end of the allotted party hours of 4-10. We made our way to the backyard, which was pretty darn cool. There was this whole, zen meditation garden thing happening, that I could very much dig having myself. You know, plant life, stones, little trickly water and whatnot. I could definitely find myself in there.

Anyway, I did not know a soul besides Bubba at this shindig. So, upon seeing the woman who'd been on the bench next to us leave, leaving this gentleman by his lonesome, I figured I'd start some small talk. He was around 50 or so, with this long, tightly braided, thin ponytail. I thought to myself, "if my ponytail looked this chumpy all these years, I've made a grave error in judgement." (for the record, I don't sport the ponytail too often these days. more of a mop-top. but I also say with confidence that when I did/do, it looks a lot better on me than on him.) So I start chatting up this guy. "Where you from? Who do you know here?" etc. After, "what do you do?" he proceded to give us 15 minutes of insane commentary.

In a nutshell, this guy was telling us how his family business, worth about $30 mil or so, was to be divided amongst himself and his two sisters. Seems one sister, systematically took over the company and has acquired all of its net worth, leaving him, his other sister, and his elderly parents, to fend for themselves. This tale blew my circuitry on so many levels, that I could barely speak.

1) Why is this man telling me, a perfect stranger, INTIMATE details of his finances? I mean, specific dollar amounts. "These are my assets. This is what I owe." etc. Is it me, or isn't it completely wrong to offer up this kind of information? It's rude, no? I don't like to tell people my rent, simply because it's none of their business, let alone, how much his father takes home annually from Social Security (which he did).

2) This whole business culminated like 2 months ago. This wound is FRESH. Yet he was unbeliveably calm about it all. More than that, he's not even angry at his sister the thief, and he's pretty much ceased fighting it. Bubba and I kept looking at each other, half outraged, half trying to keep from laughing in this guy's face. "What would you do Bubba?" "I don't know. SOMETHING." "What would you do Scott?" "I don't know. SOMETHING." This dude was like Homer Simpson. "Yeah, but what are you gonna do? Can't fight city hall."

3) The last offensive nugget was that he was mulling over the prospect of actually, potenitally having to get a JOB after all of this. You could tell that this was really troubling, and completely foreign a proposition to this guy. First he's gonna sell everything he's got. Basically, anything to avoid actual toil. As such, he deserves to lose his money.

So what did I learn from all of this? This is what happens when kids have to wear helmets when they bike ride. (I keep bringing this up because this coddling phenomenon keeps happening, and I've had a lot of contrasting commentary on my observations). Calamity hit this guy, and he's like Chauncey Gardner, the Peter Sellers character in "Being There." He's clueless about the real world. If he understood the real world at all, he'd be going Tony Soprano on his sister about now. Lastly, I'm telling you, I'm all for this California peace thing, mellowing out, be in the now, acceptance of what is and all. But at some point, a line gets crossed between a surrender to the river of life, and being rendered an impotent dormat. If I ever get as "peaceful" as this guy, someone please do me a favor and fit me with a pair of cement shoes. For MY own good.