I joined my oldest daughter, Kelly, and her twin daughters (my adored nietas) on a recent girls-only weekend to Chicago. We visited the Field Museum and spent a lot of quality time at the awesome Family Playlab, which is perfectly geared for the six-and-under set. A favorite exhibit was a mock pueblo that reflected the importance of corn in the lives of the pueblo-dwellers. The display included many plastic corn cobs that could be ‘grown’ (inserted within the plastic stalks), and subsequently harvested, gathered into baskets, ground into meal (kind of), and put into the family cooking pot.
My little nietas had great fun scurrying about with corn cobs in the provided baskets along with many of their youngish peers. Any squabbles were quickly resolved, and there was sufficient corn for all to enjoy. My daughter and I sat on a nearby bench, chatting happily within sight of the girls.
Another big hit was the adjacent family bathroom that had a child-sized toilet as well as an adult sized toilet. Upon entering, Little X1 enthusiastically proclaimed: “What a WONDERFUL Potty!” Her enthusiasm and ability to find joy in every-day things is inspiring.
We visited several more exhibits, and made a return visit to the Playlab later in the day to get out some final wiggles.
We were dismayed to find a number of larger, older children careening around the pueblo exhibit. Several larger boys were rambunctiously competing with each other to see who could gather the most corn cobs. This resulted in a couple of the boys having ALL the corn– hoarding it for the single purpose of preventing others from having it. The smaller children, which now included my little nietas, were left with no corn cobs to play with.
Enter Grandma. With X1 in hand, I approached one of the boys with a huge mountain of plastic corn cobs on the table in front of him. I advised him that we were going to take some of the cobs for the other children to play with, and proceeded to put a few cobs into X1’s basket. His mom was also at the table and she told me ‘thank you’, in an exasperated voice. It appears she had the same instincts, but lacked the energy (or possibly the parenting skills) to do anything about it.
During the remainder of our time at the pueblo, I kept a watchful eye on the corn distribution; but it just wasn’t as much fun as it had been in the morning; the constant diligence necessary to maintain the hard-won cobs detracted from the fun. Soon afterwards, little X1 moved on to a less contentious area in the playlab.
The contrast between our two visits to the pueblo was striking. In the morning, there was a natural ebb and flow of resources among all the kids, there was a sense of cooperation and mutual enjoyment. During the second visit, the older kids leveraged their relative strength, speed and competitive natures to gather and hoard all the resources; leaving the littler kids empty-handed. I was only able to wrest away some of the corn due to the authority vested upon me as an adult.
Sadly, our second experience at the pueblo reflects America’s distribution of our vast resources. Gathering and hoarding assets by the powerful and wealthy is the norm, encouraged and enabled by corporate welfare and tax breaks, leaving the majority of American’s without a slice of the proverbial pie.
America’s total net worth is in the neighborhood of $94.7 TRILLION which averages $760,000 per family–more than enough money to house, feed and clothe us all. Yet, many working American families cannot afford a decent place to live. It is a travesty.
An article by Scientific American advises that the average CEO makes 354 times more than an average worker in his / her company, and that 20% of Americans own 84% of its wealth.
It brings to mind a story I recently heard. There are 12 cookies on a plate on a table. Sitting at the table is the CEO of a large company, Donald Trump, and a teacher. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies. The teacher reaches for the last cookie. Donald looks at the CEO and yells “She is trying to take your cookie”!
The sequel to this not-so-funny joke is that The D then goes on a Twitter and Fox News ranting about how awful it is that teachers expect to eat cookies at all.
In a few hours from now, Dan and I are going to our accountant to sign our tax forms, and I will write a check for $4,000 to the IRS. It would sting less if I felt that the infamous 1% were also paying their fair share, or if our tax dollars would help those in need. As it is, I will grit my teeth, write the check, return home and have a very large glass of wine; while I can still afford to.