I’m sitting on a bench at Central Park’s 72nd Street boat pond, watching mostly nannies launch miniature yachts and model sailboats their badly behaved charges ignore, more intrigued by ducks, each other and the hotdog cart.
It’s the Upper East Side’s idea of being snottily sporty, more about parents than their offspring.
A tall WASPY blonde is towering nearby with a boy of 3, a precocious 3 I can tell right off when he takes out a hankie a mouse might use, wondering if he’s older, but just a tad short.
“That’s my little man,” says Blondie, “good job,” as he gives his button nose a good blow.
Pretending to read my book, I’m imagining what her name could be:
Wendy, Abigail, Catherine, but please, call me Cat?
All legs and hair whipping in the wind. I can just see her in long white gloves
perched on the back of an icy blue convertible, waving like a Rose Bowl Queen.
My reverie is interrupted when a Labradoodle runs by 
almost knocking little man down, who’s not too pleased.
“Mama, I don’t like dogs, make them leave?”
Mama, now checking her phone coos, “What was that darling, you want to leave? But look at all the beautiful boats.”
Here it comes…
“I like bigger boats, like Grampa’s.”
“Okay, we’ll tell Daddy when he comes home.”
NO! GRAMPA,” he says, like the future King of England. 
“Grampa will buy me one.”
I’d sure as hell like to meet Grampa.
🙂
SB
SB
I have to admit that grandparents will give grandkids things they never would have given their own offspring. I am guilty. But not a yacht. I am always well stocked with items my Pookie and I do not eat, such as fruit roll-ups, mini muffins, chicken nuggets, ice cream, goldfish, and gummies.
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I’m with you, goldfish would have been my limit, however…to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald: The rich are different from you and me. Seems like an understatement in this case. Ice-cream and gummies. Now your talkin’. 🙂
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Ugh. I can just see this kid in a few years. He will be a snooty brat no one can stand. Or, rather, will find himself in some finishing school with like-minded brats.
As for grandmothers… my mother became this woman we did not know. What? You have candies and cookies and chocolate? What about us? Where were these goodies when WE were kids?
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I used to get 5 bucks in my birthday card and was glad to get it. What would I have done with a boat Dale? sigh
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There is model sailboat money and then there is sailboat money.
Sort of like the diff between Bourbon Street and Rio . . Marriott and the Plaza. Which, oh by the way, was closed for over a year for remodeling. THAT is money, when you can be closed for remodeling toting around that address . . .
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Yes…our beloved Waldolf Astoria is closed…where FDR would stay, even having his own underground train track, still there by the way, to bring him. I think everything deserves a good clean-up, but sometimes it’s going too far when you push the old out for the brassy new…but what does that have to do with the price of tomatoes, as my Aunt Tillie used to say. Uncontrolled opulence has the opposite effect as far as I’m concerned. it’s garish, unappealing…tacky and drab. That kid already has the charm of a fart at a dinner party…in a sailor’s hat, so there Muffy. 🙂
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I dig character. I dig buildings that show you where they came from without need for the buff and polish. Yankee Stadium comes to mind. That place was doing just fine, and never mind the fact it should have been on the national register of historic places, what with all the events and icons it hosted. The new Yankee Stadium is nice, but it was unnecessary.
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Agreed. The House that Ruth Built where he laid in state as a million fans filed passed, where the Mick played and Mr.Gehrig said his poignant farewell was a cathedral. Gee Mr. Imma, now I’m in tears.
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From the Pope to Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis to the Fighting Irish. The Giants and the Colts played the greatest game of all time there in the late 50’s. Jimmy Piersall of the Cleveland Indians used to hide among the monuments in the deepest part of center field. There were only three monuments back then- Ruth, Huggins and Gehrig- and they were on the field of play.
There’s some trivia back atcha. 😉
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I love it. Didn’t know any of that. I remember reading Billy Crystal, when he was a kid, thought the Babe was buried out there. I remember that from Ken Burn’s Baseball. 🙂
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I remember hearing that, LOL.
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I guess as a kid, those statues loomed like the Empire State building. What else would you think. Right?
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They were mystical things. That would later be plucked from their honorable grave sites and retrenched in a caviar crib playpen of a billion dollar playhouse.
And the poets wonder why romance died.
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Parents don’t see how their kids are like lumps of clay, and if they make an error, will be eternal messes the world will have to deal with. You have to teach them integrity through acts of kindness and service, grace and gratitude, not by plying them with stuff, stuff and more stuff. My 2 cents
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Your 2 cents is worth a million.
The world would be a hell of a lot better off if we taught kids how to grow a garden, rather than just eat its spoils.
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Pull that. 👍
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On it! 🙂
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It’s a good habit to get into…noticing when you’re brilliant. 🙂
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Oh go on now, SB.
No, I mean it . . . go on. 🙂
Thank you for the lovely chime.
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I hear you. I also don’t know that the future possible kind of England is raised to be quite so snotty (sorry, had to pun). But … yea, there is a lot of that in certain areas (of the park, of the city, of certain cities, of certain groups of people …), where privilege practically oozes right along with the complete blindness to how glaring it is.
In my fantasy, Little Man gets an awakening by a preschool teacher who dares to teach the children tolerance and compassion (I have a high opinion of teachers’ potential to influence children’s direction in life and world-knowledge, no matter what kind of ‘narrow’ their home world is) and get him curious about values outside immediate assumption of immediate gratification as a right …
Well done, you.
Na’ama
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She’d probably get slapped with a law suit if she ever dared.
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Oy vey, I hope you’re no right but I worry you might well be … at least about ‘some’ schools …
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Here in the Big Apple the rich rule I’m afraid. Sigh
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I hear you…
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Hopefully, our little sailor will be the exception and take after one of his nannies. There’s always a a chance.
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Indeed there is! I have seen (and work with) children from the whole spectrum from utter adversity to overwhelming privilege. The children are, of course, often reflecting some of their reality, but they are still individuals who reflect their own internal abilities and hopes and personalities and possibilities, and I’m ever optimistic that good prevails, regardless of how narrow one’s exposure to the world is (and there are kinds of ‘impoverished environments’ that have nothing to do with the amount of funds one’s bank or if one has or hasn’t ‘live in staff’…). Some of the uber-privliged children I’ve worked with were in some ways in their own ‘ghettos’ as far as knowing of the world (and the people in it and the realities of it) beyond the limits of their gilded cage. Some, however, were exposed to more, and were enriched by it (pun and all?) 😉
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I wonder where the little guy got that thought.
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Good question Frank. That’s why it’s important who our role models are. 🙂
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Your truthful tales are a never-ending delight.
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Maybe Grampa with buy us boats too Anne. Nothing too fancy. 🙃
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You are more likely to meet Grampa than I am. Good luck!
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I’ll ask for two. 😴
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I don’t remember asking for anything like a boat or a car. If I did I am sure it made everyone laugh. One Christmas my brother asked for a kangaoo…a real one like at the zoo. I don’t remember what he got but I know it wasn’t a kangaroo!
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You reminded me of an old joke: What did one mama kangaroo say to the other mama kangaroo?
Don’t you hate when it rains outside, and the kids have to stay home and play…:)
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😸
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How many jokes nowadays are that innocent, I ask you. What’s that Teddy? None. That’s right. Well meowed.
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