Status Symbols

Everyone has different definitions of luxury - the one thing they feel is how they will let themselves (and, by extension, everyone else) know that they have reached a certain level in their lives. You can tell what that luxury item is to someone by how they complete the following sentence, "If I ever won some money, after I paid all my bills and put away some savings, the first thing I would do is go out and by myself a _____." Some people think that a nice house is how they will know they have "made it". Others think a vacation home or a couple of lavish trips a year are the best way to spend their money. Still others want to have a specific brand of vehicle in their driveway.

That last one is the most common. A lot of people feel as long as they have a fill-in-the-blank luxury-brand car, they can considered themselves successful. And, often times, they are willing to compromise on some of the details to get it. Because, let's be honest, if all you want is a specific brand of car, you can rearrange a few things around and get one. You could buy a slightly used model, lease one or have a ridiculously high monthly payment and sacrifice in other areas of life. When I was right out of college I remember seeing people working the same job as me, driving luxury cars. I knew how much they made, so I knew damn well they couldn't really afford it. I also knew they didn't care. They might have been living in a one-bedroom studio with a shared bathroom in a condemned building but, dammit, at least they drove an Porsche.

I was thinking about this concept of fudging around with details to still technically meet your personal definition of luxury yesterday as I was driving down a nearby street at dusk and a neighbor's sprinkler system came on. An underground sprinkler system is another one of those things that people, especially dudes who like toys such as myself, might see as a way of letting people know you made it. And clearly the person who lives there feels like this because you could tell they really wanted one, even thought it was totally unnecessary. Because, you see, it wasn't so much a sprinkler 'system' as much as one sprinkler in the center of the yard that had enough range to get the entire yard.

Still, you just know that fact doesn't matter to this guy. When he talks about this thing, he just says he has an automatic sprinkler system, damn the specifics of how many sprinklers it actually consists of. At the end of the day it is a sprinkler that he can turn on in his house, which doesn't require getting out any hoses, and when it's done disappears back underground. So, technically, he's not lying. Still, it's a little like joining "Country Club on Cape Cod" that is really neither a Country Club, nor actually "on" Cape Cod. I mean, what kind of weirdo would do something like that?