porsche – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

If you’ve been around for a while, it’s possible that you remember this story: my son attends a pricey private school, one that my wife and I are affording with financial assistance. When we first started sending him there, I was driving a Ford Escape that had a six-figure mileage and was, itself, old enough to have a drivers’ license. My current Kia Soul is an upgrade. However, there was a day, several years ago, when I was picking my son up during the winter in the Escape and experiencing a bit of class anxiety. I comforted myself with the existence of what looked like a station wagon in the parking spot next to me that also was covered in salt and muddy snow and looked kind of shitty, only to discover that I was comparing my $2000 Escape to a fucking $100,000 Porsche.

He’s at summer camp right now, and I just went to pick him up, and I found myself in the car line behind a Tesla– I don’t know exactly which model, but not the one with the weird doors. One kid got in that car and they stayed in their spot, possibly waiting for another kid. My kid came out and got in my car, so I waited for the lane to be clear and pulled out to drive around the Tesla that had been parked in front of me.

Only to find myself behind another fucking Tesla.

My wife and I do just fine, I swear, and I see the effects of actual poverty every day at work, and again, no one in this building has ever been anything other than perfectly nice, but damn, there is just no faster way to make myself feel broke than to look around at the cars any time I’m near Hogwarts. It’s ridiculous.

I suspect we’re going to be back up over 100,000 new cases a day nationwide by the end of the week, (EDIT: Ha, it happened today!) and the CDC just announced that everybody should start masking up indoors again. I just ordered a new pack of filters for my favored mask. I was really hoping to not have to teach in a mask again this year, but apparently only about 20% of 12-15-year-olds are vaccinated nationwide and I’m sure that number is lower in my district, so I really don’t have any choice. Indiana’s numbers are going up, but they aren’t spiking to the degree the nation’s are yet and St. Joe County isn’t as hot as the rest of Indiana, so I’m pretty sure the school year will be starting as normal this year. That said, I don’t think I knew on July 27 last summer how this year would be starting yet, so who the hell knows? I suspect everyone will just close their eyes and pretend Covid has gone away, but we’ll see.

I’ve said this before: I could send my kid to his school for the next nine years or I could buy a new car every year for the next nine years, or a really nice car every two years, which might be a bit more reasonable. My current vehicle is old enough to drive itself and has 150,000 miles on it. It looks good for its age, honestly, but anything even vaguely resembling a close inspection will reveal certain, oh, let’s call them beauty marks that make it clear that if I tried to trade this thing in I might well have to pay the dealers to take it off my hands.

I went to pick the boy up today and there was apparently some sort of athletic event going on, because the lot I parked in, which was usually empty, was full. I get a weird sort of class anxiety whenever we go to big school events because you can tell from the parking lot that most of the people who send their kids here have tons more money than I do. (And I should be clear: everyone there has always been perfectly nice. This shit’s in my head.)

However! It is mid-January. In northern Indiana. Everyone’s car is covered with road salt and sand and shit and looks like hell. No one’s car looks nice in northern Indiana in mid-January. Go ahead; take it to the car wash. It’ll look like shit by the time you get it home.

I glanced at the car behind me, a dark blue or black station-wagon-lookin’ thingy, as I was heading into the building. See? I thought. That person’s car looks like a piece of shit, just like mine. You’re being ridiculous. Stop it. Those folks are like you. Nobody rich drives a station wagon.

And then I got a closer look at the hood of the car.