Spreading "The" Wealth (Vanity)

Last year I let a family member move in with me. I’ll call her my niece. My niece was down on her luck and needed a place to stay while she got on her feet.

As it turns out, she was actually down with drugs and needed a place to lie on the couch while she got on the phone. But anyway. I came home one day and was looking for my iron, so I could iron clothes to wear to work.

(“Work is that place you go to,” I explained to her, “and they pay you to do things for them. Yes, like that time you took the baggie to some guy named Raoul in the parking lot of the grocery store nearby. Rather like that, only more regular, and legal.”)

I puzzled over this for a bit. She loaned my iron to some girl I barely knew? She loaned my iron to some girl she barely knew?! Would I loan any of her items to a friend of mine? Let me think. No. I wouldn’t.

The clue lies in the wording. “I loaned the iron…” THE iron. Not YOUR iron, Auntie Beth, THE iron. The local iron. The iron that existed here before I came and is therefore part of the landcape. Like the sun, the trees, and the street. Belonging to nobody, or everybody.

So let’s really parse what Barack Obama says to plumbers and other people who’ve done something with their lives besides lecture like a lawyer turned college professor turned professional pied piper: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

I think the most important word in that sentence really is “the.” THE wealth. Not your wealth, says Obama, because it’s not yours. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t intend to spread HIS too thin. I have a feeling his daughters will be taken care of before anyone else’s kids.

Snide comments aside, Obama said THE wealth because that’s how he thinks of it. Community property. Belonging to everyone. Just THERE, like sunlight, a fact of life that we determine how to utilize.

To Obama, it’s not something that belongs to anyone. Not something you created, earned, or own. Just something that you somehow managed to get hold of, maybe by picking it off a tree, and now you need to share what came from that tree.

And don’t worry. That tree will always bear fruit. It always has, right? Well no, it hasn’t, but only the gardener who planted it realizes that. The lawyer who comes along representing the neighbors who’ve been eying that fruit tree doesn’t know, or care, how it got there. It’s there now, isn’t it?

Well, she stayed with me for four months, and at first it wasn't so bad. At first she had a job and did well for a few weeks. Then she started going out several nights a week. Then she started missing work.

She said she was just "partying too hard," and at the time I didn't know "party" was codeword for cocaine. Then she lost her job.

Then my landlord said she wasn't on the lease and couldn't stay. He didn't want to put her on the lease because her credit report was appalling. So for three months, she crashed on the couches of the friends she'd made "partying."

Finally, the landlord said she could stay if I agreed to a rent hike. I agreed, she moved back in, and about a month later came the first "cocaine in my apartment" incident. I kicked her out but her car got booted with all her possessions in it because it turns out she was getting parking tickets left and right, and not paying them. Her party-buddies were no longer interested in helping her. There was much crying and panic, not just with her but her mom.

I took her back and we started looking for a little studio she could afford. After six weeks, we found one, and I paid the deposit and first month's rent. She moved out and lived there for a few months. I relocated to an undisclosed location (at great expense, from which I have still not recovered financially.)

After four months on her own, she returned to her family in the Midwest, and has been living with them for about eight months.

I did, however, get my iron back, although I lost some of my favorite clothes, and a few DVDs. But I gained some valuable insights about the wisdom of helping those who do not excel at helping themselves.

I’m sorry that your neice ended up being such a drain and a disappointment.

People like that are parasites...They will drain their hosts and never give them another thought.

I’m very sorry this happened to you.

Wisdom hard won, is a treasure.

My prayers for both of you.

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