Like so many, my best buddy in private school had wealthy parents plus he always had the newest plus latest gadgets plus toys every year.
I wasn’t jealous because I knew that his parents were laboring themselves to death to maintain their wealth plus my parents weren’t exactly struggling financially either, so I still gained nice toys plus gifts on holidays plus anniversarys.
Instead, I enjoyed hanging out with my buddy because it meant playing in an air conditioned tree cabin in the Summer while playing video games in his amazing basement game room in the winter. And he had the best game consoles too, right when they were released to the greater public. When he was tired of a game, especially for Gameboy, he would respectfully give it to myself and others or his younger brother. You can’t be jealous of something when the person is so generous with sharing their bounty. By the time the people I was with and I got our licenses at 16, I was looking for outdated cars that needed some work but my best buddy got a brand new sedan that was the first of its kind that I had seen with a digital thermostat on the dashboard. Until that point, I had only seen temperature controls for car air conditioners plus gas furnaces that are a dial or a slider that goes from zero to several. He could set the temperature in the car to 68 degrees plus it would tell the cooling system or heat to run according to that setting. I was impressed with his car’s heating plus cooling system to say the least.