I’d like to talk about money.
Money is something that, until recently, I knew very little about. I still don’t have any money, personally, but I know lots of people who do. One of these people is my Mother. She invited me to a fundraising dinner. ‘It’s £90 a head,’ She emailed me. ‘Would you like to come?’ I wondered what to do. ‘Um,’ I emailed back. ‘It depends…’ (A normal person would now have put me out of my misery, and explained if I was to pay the £90 or they were. My Mother is not a normal person). ‘It depends on what?’ My Mother emailed back cheerfully.
It turns out she was paying, so I went. ‘It starts at 6.30pm,’ My Mother told me the day before the dinner. ‘I can’t get there til 8.30pm,’ I explained. ‘No problem at all,’ My Mother insisted. ‘You are on a table of young professionals. No-one will be there before 9pm.’ My Mother has very odd views of young professionals, the oddest being that I am one of them, but I couldn’t be bothered to argue, so I set about preparing to walk into a dinner 2 hours late.
I knew, what with my unacceptable lateness, that it was important that I made a good first impression. So as I sat down to my (full) table, I stuck my hand out to the chap to my left, and introduced myself. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m Lucy. I hope you haven’t eaten my food.’ Things were going swimmingly. I’m not a young professional, so I let the others talk about their careers and rents and aspirations while I got on with my own job- getting as much for my (Mother’s) money as possible.
I ate my own food, asked the lady next to me if I could have her leftovers, and convinced the waitress to shovel the rest of the shared dish onto my plate before she cleared.
I asked the chap next to me if I could borrow a pen, and didn’t return it. I collected all the young professionals’ business cards- business cards are the perfect size for flashing pithy little insults at people when they are on the phone. (You write the insult on the white bit at the back of the card, obviously).
I feel that I am now in a much better position to talk about money. You can tell who has money by how they act at a fancy fundraising dinner. I’m pretty sure I fooled everyone. After all, the rich didn’t become rich by not getting their money’s worth, did they?
unfashionablylost 