middle class guilt

Well, I guess things have happened to me recently.

I just got my Prius 2006. Google sponsors $5000 for the purchase of a Prius, and with a tax credit of $3000 given out for those purchased in the early part of 2006, it's really a pretty good deal. It's a bit too trendy, I concur -- it did take me a year before I reluctantly started using the iPod that Google gave me -- but for once, partaking in a trend actually benefits the environment. How convenient.

On the morning after I picked up my Prius, I was rear-ended.

I hate driving new cars, for all the obvious reasons. I'm happy whipping my '97 Corola around, but whenever I'm driving my Prius, I can't stop picturing a wayward car ramming directly into my side, killing me instantly and worse, cracking the paint and requiring thousands to repair. Sadness falls upon the earth. At my funeral, people gather and whisper softly to each other, "that car only had 300 miles on it, tops. Imagine how much it'll cost to repaint." For me, it seems that middle class guilt will not only be repaid with an ironic loss of things I've purchased to secure my middle class status. On top of that, there must always be certain, horrible death.

These are the thoughts that occupied me as I pulled up to the intersection, stopping at the red light. A few moments, a jerk and a bump later, I was outside of my car investigating the dent.

It happened in East Palo Alto, the slums of the Bay Area. Accordingly, as I got out of my car to face the perpetrator of our little accident, I was met with the most polite resident of EPA, incredibly worried and profusely apologetic. I was dazed and confused, trying to calm him down while jotting down his phone and license plate numbers. There was only the smallest of dents on my rear bumper, and I said my good-bye quickly, with a promise to call him later today. I drove away with a smirk. Middle class guilt. Ha! I only got a little dent!

I got a quote from a local auto body shop for repairing the bumper. It was a breath-taking six hundred bucks. Jorge had braked at the light, but with the ground being wet -- and Californians being unaccustomed to rain -- his car slid forward regardless, and gently bumped into mine. The damage was small enough that he really didn't want the insurance companies to be involved. But six hundred bucks? I didn't think he could pay six hundred bucks. And I know this because he lives in EPA, drives a beat-up mustang, and can't-afford-six-hundred-bucks was the best stereotype I could come up with.

I called him with a cringe. "Six hundred dollars." Silence followed. Inevitably he spoke up. "I, it was, it was such a small dent. I don't think it's worth six hundred dollars."

Of course it wasn't. Middle class guilt is now dancing in the room, flashing stereotypes before my eyes. A decent, poor but hard-working man with a bit of bad luck, running into a new, yuppie car of middle class me, who demands unreasonable repair costs to keep his precious car spanking new, and the man spanking poor. The six hundred bucks will take him months to accumulate, and will be used in service of keeping the rich rich and the poor poor. It's like forcing someone who lost both legs as a child to lick your toe.

"I think it's too expensive too", I followed quickly. "Tell you what, I'll try going to a few different auto body shops and see if I can't find a better price."

Anything to make the toe more palatable, I guess.

A few days and many moments later, we stood at another auto body shop. The repairman offered to pop out the dent for sixty bucks, and we quickly agreed to the attempt. He tried, and he failed. The dent is less obvious, but still very much in existence.

"I could also sand it down and repaint it, which will make it look brand new", the repairman offered. "That'll take $350."

All eyes were on me. Am I going to leave it be, accept the existing but hard-to-spot dent and cost Jorge only $60, or be an asshole and demand the full $350?

"It's really pretty hard to spot", Jorge noted. "But I understand it's brand new, and I understand if you want to sand it down. I just want to do the right thing here."

I can see him lifting his head off the floor, pulling his body forward with his arms, his only means of transport. The right thing for him to do would be to pay the costs necessary to restore my car to the same condition as before the accident. But what's the right thing for me to do?

I hesitated. I didn't care about the dent, really -- God knows many of them are on the way. But it felt like he should pay the $350. It felt like that's how responsibilities fall. That's how the world works. I took off my socks and lifted up my foot.

"I think...", I cringed, and kept cringing as I said it. "I think I'd like to sand it down." The foot is right before his face, his neck strained to meet it in the air.

"Okay", he muttered. He took out his wallet, and counted his money. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred.

One lick, two licks, three.

Yes, I'm a terrible person. I promised to get him a Google shirt, to decorate him with the emblem of my success, a mockery of a sympathetic gesture. The shirt should say, "I licked a middle-class man's toe, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." On the back of the shirt will be a sticker, secretly and jokingly applied by me, that says "This man is poor. Kick him."

And so the affair ends. Middle class guilt sits across from me in the room, smirking. "You'll never be rid of me", it mouths, completely satisfied with the loud, droning noise as the system churns forward. Before disappearing into thin air for a while, it blinked, its eyes shining with the promise of my demise, an ironic, justifying collapse of my economic status.

Oh, and certain, horrible death.