Money Does NOT Equal Class!

As I sit here at 2:10 AM in the morning (Sunday morning) a group of young men/boys camps out next door in a large tent in their backyard. It is a beautiful night. It is cool and perfect sleeping weather - but neither myself nor these neighbors are asleep. I have been lying awake for the past hour due to laughter and loud voices coming from that tent.

Have I turned into a cranky old neighbor lady who's lost her memory of what it is to be young, giggly and sleep deprived? NO!! Not at all! What I am is a woman who is irritated, sickened, and (literally) shaking from anger. I have ended up here, in front of this computer, in order to restrain myself from marching over there and giving a group of "young men" a piece of my mind!

I wish I could provide some kind of audio for you all to listen to. But the following sampling will have to suffice. Here's what I've been hearing from my bedroom window for the past hour, hour and a half...

"Hey fag**t, suck my di** ok?" "Shut up bit**" "You fu**ing homo you need to stop having unprotected sex with your dog." "Bit** go fu** your mama" "You fu**ing wetback" "Ya, nice tits you have there" "Your mama's tits..." "My di** is ..." "Hey you cracker little homo get off ..." "Bit** you better not..." "Go to fu**ing sleep you little bit**"................................

This is but a sampling of the crap I've had to listen to on this beautiful night. Shut my windows? Sure, I could do that and turn the a/c on. But why should I have to? What sickens me the most in times like these (because this isn't the FIRST incident like this) is that Tim and I left our old neighborhood which was starting to be encroached by gangs and drugs etc., and moved here to "escape". Mind you we also moved because we were "trading up" for a "better neighborhood" and a bigger/better/newer house. Our house is in fact bigger, better and newer. But as for the neighborhood? The home values are 3-4 times that of our old neighborhood but the people who reside within their walls have NO CLASS at all!

In my old neighborhood, sure if I took the girls for a walk down to the park we'd see a bum drinking from a paper bag on the bench there and all the equiptment had graffiti/foul language written on it. But for goodness sakes I've got a brand new house in an "upper middle class" neighborhood now. It seems the bums now live right next door to me and the "graffiti" is audible and polluting my air!

This TRASH that lives next door to me is light years away from showing the same kind of class and decency that my old neighbors had. Yes, in their little 1950's bungalows with detached garages lived a better "class" of people than I've found here on a street where the average home price is around $400,000.(that's a lot for Illinois) My old neighborhood was filled with people of different races, levels of education, and ages. You'd see a statue of the Blessed Mother prominently displayed in some front yards. You'd see old men walking to and from the grocery store or the bakery which were nearby but still quite a "hike". But the older couples would help us "younger ones" out with bringing up our trash cans or sealing our driveways. They'd gush over our kids and warmly congratulate us on pregnancies.

Not so here in whitey white sterilized suburbia. Here we have neighbors who gather around to mumble under their breaths in horror when a new family moves in and (gasp) "Oh no! they have BLACK children!" I won't even tell you the HORRIBLE things that Tim and I heard concerning that! Neighbors who "compete" over landscaping and make derogatory comments about those who haven't "done enough with their yards" We are guilty as charged. I always say it's because we'd rather our "landscape" be filled with flowers of the human variety. Here every kid has a motorized vehicle by the age of 2. You know the kind. The mini hum-v or the tiny jeep. Every 3rd bay is filled with toys and gadgets galore. Everybody has an oversized SUV but only 2 kids. (we have a suburban but our family actually takes up all the seats) Here we have people who spend $5,000 on their kids at Christmas time (a mom actually told me herself). Our old neighbors probably spent $5,000 for their cars!!

This leads me to the title of this post. Money does NOT equal class. I think there might have been a time when that was true. But no longer. Education, money, "success", do NOT give you any sense of social grace, personal responsibility, or culture. What they give you is a big house and a license to look down your nose at the "poor folk" who live in those "bad neighborhoods". People feel the size of their mortgage entitles them to act like a foul-mouthed fool and call it "humor" or worse yet call it "humility". Yes! This is how this low-class, uncultured, unsophisticated, sophmoric behavior is viewed. "See me with my beer and my occasional f-bomb? I'm keeping it real. I haven't let this nice neighborhood and my big house go to my head. I can still hang out and fit in like a 'regular guy'. I am humble despite my 'success'. "

As for people like me. I am tolerated. I am a stuck up, self-righteous, prude. I really should get off my homeschooling, church going high horse! Maybe I should learn to "mix it up" with a little "fun" with the neighbors. I'm sooo up tight you know? I guess I'm just another one of those right wing radical extremists I hear about. The women here think they need to "convert" me or else they just avoid me like the plague. I had one neighbor say "You know what I'd love to do for you Kristan? I'd love to take you out one night and get you drunk and have you dance on the table tops with me!" Guess what lady? Been there. Done that. (little do they know...) I did something most in this neighborhood have not. I GREW UP!

I guess that's the main difference I see in people. It's not the money they make or the house or neighborhood they live in. It's not the level of education they have or even their age. It's not their race or religion. It's not even their level of religious fervor or committment ( I know that may bother some for me to say but it's true). It really comes down to a matter of those people who continue to live their lives as selfish spoiled little teenagers into their 30's, 40's, 50's, and beyond and those people who grow up and continue to grow, striving to become a better, more decent contributing member of this world. There are people who feel an obligation or better yet an opportunity to do something good for the world even if that simply means helping carry up your neighbors' garbage cans or enthusiastically congratulating them on another baby. Then there are people who feel and obligation only to themselves to do whatever is "good" for them even if that simply means keeping up your neighbor until 3AM with your foul mouthed "children"!!

Hopefully the little "men" have cursed themselves to sleep by now and I can go to bed...