55. Just Plain Spoiled
This is my craziest Christmas story, bar none. I hung out with a bunch of poor misfits in high school. We all wore hand-me-down clothes and qualified for free lunch at school and stuff. Lots of single-parent families and government assistance. This one girl in my group complained more than anyone else about how her family was poor. She often didn’t have a lunch, and so the other kids would all chip in and either give her money or share our own lunches.
Two of the kids we hung out with were twin brothers. Their mom was raising them, plus their older brother, all on her own because their dad was incarcerated. He finally got out when we were teens, and pretty much immediately ran off and refused to pay support too. Because of the circumstances, the boys started working to support their family really young—first doing odd jobs for folks and then getting real jobs as soon as they could.
The two of them felt so sorry for this girl, they decided to surprise her for Christmas one year. They saved up for months and bought her a brand-new game system she’d wanted. Meanwhile, she gave a few of us used games and books—obviously previously played/read by her—wrapped in tinfoil instead of gift wrap, and we all shrugged that off because of course, she was poor.
A couple weeks after that Christmas, the awful truth came out. The girl’s parents decided to let her throw her first small party for her friends at their house. Her dad picked us all up in their brand-new minivan, and then drove us to their brand-new house. After we arrived, we got introduced to her new puppy, and then given the home tour which included five bedrooms and a pool. Also notable was the girl’s bedroom, where her new game system sat alongside two other recent systems.
I found out later that her dad was an attorney, and her mom was a medical assistant. Her parents’ combined income was 3-4x what my family made in a year, much less our friends who had worked their tails off to buy her that game system.
Her idea of being “poor” was based on her parents not buying her everything she wanted immediately. The reason she never had lunch money? She saved what her folks gave her to buy herself things instead, while mooching off kids who were on free lunch. The reason she always gave us used stuff as gifts? Because she would have her parents buy a bunch of stuff “for her friends” at holidays, then keep it for herself while giving us stuff she no longer wanted instead.
I’ll never forget the look on my friends’ faces as they slowly realized that the person, they’d worked to support out of sympathy was actually just a spoiled brat.