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It’s payday in America. The stimulus checks are rolling in, and people are getting cozy with their newfound scratchoff wealth. My social media feed is dripping with boastful posts of grocery bags filled to the handle with inorganic vegetables and processed yogurts to “keep my family alive.” It’s as though half the nation played the “Year of Plenty” card in Settlers of Catan. You’ve got people crying as they pay their electric bills, rent, and whatever else people get instead of new irons in the spring. I had to delete my TikTok just to stop throwing up in my mouth long enough to eat my wild northwest smoked coho salmon.
No check for me, though. Not that I was expecting one. I’ve learned to live without the helping hand of Uncle Sam these past 31 years. You see, I grew up in a middle upper class family who taught me that the big, bloated government is more likely to take from my pockets than to give. “You’ve done too well,” says the tax man, readjusting his monocle as he checks his ledger once and again. Then he takes his tithe to pay a school teacher I’ll never meet at my private school, or to extend the medicare safety net to those too lazy to brush their own teeth, or to buy a new patrol car for a policeman who will never arrest me because I’m too polite.
You think I don’t want free money? Of course I do. But according to our bureaucratic overlords, you gotta rake in less than $99,000/year in order to get that $1200 key bump. As a prominent shareholder in Dad Inc., my monthly dividends put me outside the drop zone for government gravy. Not that $1200 would move the needle anyway; I spend that on mozzarella in July.
It’s not the first time I’ve been punished for being exceptional. When I was in 4th grade, my parents signed me up for a YMCA basketball league. I think it was coed, but it was tough to tell. These androgynous pigeons could barely run, let alone dribble. In one game, I discovered the art of chase-down blocks, and I started ruining lives. You know, the sort of earth-shattering fly swats that would have seen the crowd falling back into each other or running for the door, had I grown up in a *cough* different neighborhood? Anyway, following my fourth or fifth Mutumbo, the ref blew his whistle and called a foul. All-ball is an understatement: I spiked this thing out of the air, after it had left the tomboy’s hands. He then escorted me to the bench and said “you can’t do that anymore.” When I protested, our coach told me we had to give the other kids a chance because they had paid their entry fee too. As I saw it, I had been benched for my greatness, sidelined for my supremacy. The injustice stung all the way till we stopped at the Friendly’s drive-thru window, when dad handed me a cyclone and promised we’d find a league that sucked less.
Still, it was a valuable lesson: sometimes America doesn’t want people to rise above, to distinguish themselves. The distribution of these stimulus checks is just the latest chapter in a long tale of what they call “equal opportunity” and what I call rewarding laziness. It brings to mind that Catwoman quote from The Dark Knight Rises: “you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” Those with checks will live large for now, but the rest of us will have our day.
In the end, I blame the democrats. Always whining about bird life and the dangers of paintball. Not sure exactly what they did here but it certainly smells like fish, which is another animal they’ll befriend before they cook.
Look, I get it: times are tough. We’re already two weeks in to this year’s golf season, and I haven’t been able to make a single tee time because the governor of Maine says golf isn’t essential. How on earth GOLF violates social distancing, I’ll never know. I hit the ball so much farther than everyone that there’s no chance we’d ever be within six feet of each other. Maybe on the greens, but anything within six feet is gimme territory anyway.
Point is, we’ve all had to make sacrifices. But you don’t see me applying for a check based on what I’ve given up. I mean sure, I once accepted cash from an ex’s dad to never see her again. He was tired of replacing her window, which kept cracking because it couldn’t support the weight of the ladder I used to make sure she was sleeping ok. But that was a favor to him because those windows were expensive.
God, I can’t wait until this over. I miss capitalism. For now, enjoy your $1200 people; don’t spend it all in one place.