What to do with all this money?

This is a problem I’ve never really had.

Yesterday I went on a school field trip with my oldest son, and the ride home took two hours longer than usual for a total of four hours on a shrill, cramped, steamy school bus.

(Oh, how I appreciate my own particular kids after spending the day and much of the evening with the offspring of others. Is it me? Is it them? Do my children spring horns when they’re out of my range? I don’t suspect it, but if so, let me know. While T and I drew our own version of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips on the translucent windows, children around us fought and mouthed off and tossed trash hither thither. I was proud of my quiet, respectful kid.)

Around the three hour mark I finished my book and T dozed off against my shoulder. The woman on my other side offered me a can of espresso, for which I wanted to kiss her. We talked. We talked about how convinced we were that we were crap at our jobs, how difficult it is to stay married while renovating your house, how setting fire to your yard isn’t the best way to clear the land for a vegetable garden. Then she told me she’d recently gotten a promotion and to celebrate, she’d bought her husband a mustang.

I thought, but did not say: “When my husband got a raise we each bought new pants at J.C. Penny.”‘

I liked her a lot, and that can be unusual for me – I’m reserved and shy and a tiny bit suspicious about new people, so when I find someone I can connect with fairly easily I’m thrilled. But – a mustang? “Mustangs are so expensive!” she moaned to me. “Of course it costs way more than my raise!”

I’ve heard about this trend on the news. The consuming trend. But she was so coherent of it. She knew buying the mustang was a bad idea, and she did it anyway. She didn’t mention plans to sell it, but maybe that’s just not part of the story she told me. I hope they sell it. Sell it and put the money in the bank. Or invest the money in their house, because it sounds like they are barely able to survive their oddly modeled bedrooms and the weirdly situated kitchen and the flooded basement.

I only just met her, but I’m worried about her.

But, what’s that thing about that which we despise in another person is that which we see in ourselves, something something? While no mustang will ever appear in our driveway we do splurge perhaps too often on takeout Chinese food. And M bought an afghan he didn’t need today. And I do find it easy to click PURCHASE when I mean to click READ FREE SAMPLE. I am far from innocent. I completely understand what my new friend was reaching for when she bought that car. For just a moment to feel successful, accomplished, worthy of the admiration of her family and friends. Of course it only lasts a day or two, until the payment comes due and once again you are a woman approaching forty who has never, ever earned more than $22,000 a year.

Dear woman on the crowded school bus: let’s make a pact and avoid the shops for a while.

And thank you, again, for the espresso. It made all the difference.