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It’s not that I don’t like this person — okay it is, otherwise she would be my friend instead of my acquaintance. She can be an extremely fun and funny person, but the one thing that drives me crazy about her, is that she thinks she is better than everyone else. According to her, she can’t talk to anyone besides her husband because he is the only person close to her intellectual level, she can’t work out with anyone because no one can possibly keep up with her strenuous regimen, and (she actually said this?!) no women want to be friends with her because it is too hard on them to always be compared to her physically.
She is indeed an intelligent, attractive and fit individual, but I’m thinking no one wants to be friends with her because she is absolutely insufferable.
The sad thing is, though she is in the extreme, she is not the only person who thinks like this. It seems more and more I am becoming surrounded by people who think life is a competition. There is no doubt that people like her have always existed and will always exist, but I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how a person can think that he, she or anyone else is better than another person based on wealth, intelligence, physical beauty or material possessions.
My friend Cori doesn’t want to date anyone without a college degree or a good job, despite the fact that she took six years to barely qualify for her degree and works as a cashier. Maybe she is just being pragmatic, after all, she does live significantly beyond her means, but I feel she is just being a smidge demanding considering her circumstances. She feels she would have nothing to talk about with a man who doesn’t have a degree.
There are many men and women who feel exactly the same way. A fact I think is funny, considering some of the smartest individuals I know have never been to college and a couple didn’t graduate from high school. On the other hand, I know a girl on the Dean’s List who can point out Africa on a map, but that’s it. This is just one of many travesties fueling my belief that there should be mandatory college exit exams.
One of my old roommates was obsessed with money and material things. We got together one evening shortly after she moved out. I had purchased a candle at the dollar store and she informed me that she “only burned Yankee Candles in her home,” which I found extremely amusing later that evening as she was on the phone begging the power company to turn on her lights back on. I couldn’t help but thinking: I hope she has a lot of Yankee Candles in stock as she’s going to need them to light the house come nightfall. I would have left my dollar store candle but that wouldn’t be good enough in her home.
Her assumptions about wealth were further proved wrong one day when, after a chance meeting with an ex-boyfriend at the grocery store, she announced she felt bad for him because he was poor (he had driven away in a Neon). She could not understand my amusement as I explained to her that he was one of the wealthiest men in town and was heir to one of the most famous faucet companies in the world. “Why doesn’t he drive a Lexus then?” was her only response.
I wonder how my friend Cori would react if she heard someone say he didn’t want to date her because she’s just a cashier? Would she be upset? She really wouldn’t have a right to be given her attitude towards those without a degree. Maybe she would learn not to judge people by what they do, or by what is on their CV. Maybe she would stop and consider that everyone has feelings, even those who don’t have a degree.
Donna Strumski is a thirtysomething traveler who has a passion for both Bollywood and chocolate.
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