My heart hurts when your heart hurts. That’s what I thought about after a recent conversation with someone who had shared feelings of sadness after a snub.

How does one navigate the ramifications of class conflict which stems from the class system of our society? How do we reach across the “class lines” between the poor, the middle class and the rich? I’ve given great thought to that throughout the years.

Having experienced the feelings of inadequacy as a child growing up with much less than most, I am sensitive to how others feel when looked down upon for having less. I understand, or so I thought, how hard it can be when you want so badly to have that which you don’t.

And then I spent the weekend with my father. At nearly 86 years of age, this is a man that grew up in a family of eleven children during The Great Depression. His father wasn’t a farmer. His father was a farmers helper … a farm hand. Dad relayed the story of there being holes in the floorboards of their home. And how when he was five, everyone had built Santa Claus up to be a saint and savior. “Be a good boy and Santa will bring you something good!” he told me. That year he awoke to an orange and some walnuts Christmas morning. He looked at his father and said, “Santa needn’t have bothered” and went back to bed. In his relaying of the story, he had no idea until many years later that the look on his fathers face was more likely hurt than the anger he thought he saw. The following year, apparently the local church made sure my dad and his siblings had a big Christmas. He remembers receiving a Radio Flyer wagon and a small milk truck painted red and blue with real milk bottles. Best Christmas ever, he said. It made me think of how I buy lots of gifts for families at Christmas so some poor child can know the magic of Christmas and it hit me. I am buying Christmas gifts for my father, so to speak. Brought tears to my eyes. Perspective ~ how it changes as you grow older. All these years later he realizes the hurt his father must have felt over the innocence of a sons “out of the mouth of babes” declaration of Santa being an unjust liar. The things we wish we could take back in this life are many.

I was ever so blessed to grow up without holes in the floorboards of my home. But there were times when I actually thought we were poor. I mean we had the basics .. a roof over our head and food and two cars even, but there wasn’t much extra. And my thoughts go straight to that Santa conversation my father relayed to me. When I hear that story, I am filled with shame to think I didn’t have it so good. Truth is, years later and due to “perspective”, I realize my life was quite rich compared to my dad’s and compared to so many other folks in this world. As I’ve grown older, in talking with childhood friends, the echoes of my same story fills my ears. I hear their stories and I find their stories are mine and mine is theirs. Living in an Air Force town most of us were in pretty much the same boat.

Fast forward to the day I married a doctor. Coming from the background I did, not poor as it turns out, but definitely not rich either, one might think “marrying up”, as they say, would have been something I strived for. The life it has afforded me as far as luxuries and the ability to travel has certainly been nice, but never have I ever let that go to my head. It blows my mind over the years the number of well-to-do people I’ve met, including doctors wives, who mistreat others simply because, well, apparently … they think they just can. For example, in a recent effort to retrieve dry cleaning from our local dry cleaners (who is going out of business), I stopped in and when the lady asked if she could help me, I said, “Since y’all have had my dry cleaning over a month, I was in hopes it was ready.” Not said in an unkind way whatsoever, as it’s rare for me to ever speak unkindly to anyone other than my immediate family (another story for another day … or not). So I was truly taken aback and shocked when this lady pointed her finger and started shaking it in my face and replied, “FIRST of all … there’s no Y’ALL about this! I am a customer just like you and I’m just up here trying to help everyone find their laundry” which, by the way, she says, they had had “five of her husbands $400 shirts AND two sets of King size 800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets to be ironed”.  Well my mind went in several directions with all of that. First and foremost, who, pray tell, are you to shake your bony, French manicured, three carat diamond decorated finger in my face? Second, I have no idea who you are, nor do I care. I’m just trying to get my laundry, thank you very much. And lastly, who in the heck buys $400 shirts for their husband? Really? Even if I could afford to do that, oh and by the way Missy, I can except maybe I’d like to pay my light and grocery bill and give some money to people starving in the world instead. And who in H-E-double hockey sticks irons their sheets?! Of course I didn’t say any of those things but yes ma’am, I shore did think ’em, all the while giggling at myself for doing so, and then I gave her my name to retrieve my husbands $50 Dillard’s dress shirts (ever aware $50 is more than my daddy ever could have paid for a shirt growing up). I would later learn who this woman was and why she felt she could speak down to me in the manner she did. She fit the perfect stereotype of an upper class person quite well. But here’s the coolest thing of all … I’ve been doin’ the rich doctors wife game a long time. And just like my daddy, who realized when he got older that it’s all about perspective, I can’t remember a day that I ever thought I was better than anyone else. I also can’t think of a day my husband has ever thought he was better than anyone else. And when my daddy overcame his poor upbringing neither did he ever act that way. I do remember days when I wasn’t as practical or as frugal as I am now in purchases I made, but never, ever would I point and shake my finger in anyone’s face other than in perhaps the occasional scare tactic for one of my kids.

I also thought back to the early years of my marriage and the mistreatment I received when others were jealous of my good fortune and how much that hurt, all the while knowing the sacrifices and troubles and sadnesses that can accompany the “rich doctor wife life”. No one thinks doctors families have problems other than spoiled, bratty kids.

Perspective. It’s all about perspective. This is what I tried to relay to my snubbed friend. At the risk of sounding preachy, or even worse, less than humble, I will go out on a limb and say I pray this world becomes a more kind and loving place, knowing all the while it starts with me and it starts with you. You hang in there sweet friend and keep doing you.

Perspective … my daddy came a long way from that disappointed poor boy … that walked with his two brothers down that dirt road to the Lovely Grove Baptist church  and got baptized in Gum Swamp Creek seventy-four years ago, his parents unable to attend being too poor to by that “$400 shirt” to wear to church. And I’ve come along way from the young child of an enlisted Air Force father thinking being unable to buy lots of “$400 dresses” to wear was sad.

I encourage my friend to be ever mindful being snubbed by someone that has more money than her is hardly what’s important. Here’s what I know without a shadow of a doubt … money will never be able to buy manners or class. And I don’t mean social class.

Perspective indeed.

Gum Swamp Creek, my dad in uniform, my grandmother and grandfather Fincher, the old homestead and Lovely Grove Baptist Church