Ego

I zig-zagged around the parking lot, in search of the elusive Saturday space. Crowds were worse than usual – it was a sunny day, a happy weather day, a get-me-outta-the-house day. In the best of circumstances, I wouldn’t have ended up at a large chain store off Reisterstown Road, but for reasons too depressing to divulge without having had a single potent beverage today, my action-adventure options were none. So I circled the parking lot.

In the way-back right side, farthest from the door, I thought I saw a space. Two spaces? An SUV was blocking my view, but it looked like I might be in luck. Just before I swung my ’98 Saturn into it, I saw the Aston Martin convertible of “Meteorite Silver”, parked diagonally across the two spaces. For those of you not familiar with this car (as I was not, until I looked it up on Wikipedia), it’s a six-figure purchase. It’s a house. It’s a college education. A fancy one. So, I was rather relieved not to have smashed it.

And then I got annoyed. Because, really, how unimpressive is that? How do you become such a person – who is not James Bond – who spends the money that could have gone towards many dozens of life-enriching experiences to obtain a bulletesque vehicle instead, who cruises out to a big-box discount store on a road notorious for bent fenders, who thinks it’s his right to take up two spaces on a busy Saturday while the real people are out buying their toilet paper? Show-offs. I’m may sometimes be jealous of their posessions, but never their incredible capacity for delusion. How much lovelier is life when you understand that you are not your stuff?