I don’t remember the exact year it happened. I only remember that I was cold . . . and hungry . . . and broke. The cold and hungry part is easy enough to explain. I was skiing. The broke part is my tale of woe. My career was in ruins following an untimely layoff (it happened two months before the Twin Towers went down.) With no job prospects on the horizon, we were forced to survive for 2-3 years on savings. When gainful employment finally came my way, it came at a huge pay cut. I was barely on one foot when I got an invitation to go skiing with a few family members.
The timing of this ski outing was not only fiscally irresponsible, it was borderline immoral. My wife thought I needed a joie-de-vivre injection and forced me to go. Naturally, my ski partners picked the most expensive of the three resorts in the vicinity, which meant a pricey lift ticket. We would be skiing the whole day. That meant lunch at the lodge—my fellow skiers were not the types to brown bag it. In a wacky sort of paradox, being on the ski hill was making me acutely aware of my poverty.
We were a party of five. My niece, the nexus, was related to me and her sister-in-law whose husband happened to be a multi-millionaire. I’d gone about 25 years since meeting a bona fide millionaire. I was in Leadville, Colorado, and invited to a BBQ. The host lived on an acre of mountain land in a doublewide trailer and was missing an arm. He earned his millions by cutting huge swaths through the forest for large public works projects. He got one paycheck for the cutting. He got another paycheck selling the felled timber to lumber yards. I didn’t mind meeting the Colorado millionaire. I was 18 and wasn’t expected to have money, and the food was good. By the time I met my second millionaire, I was supposed to be established . . . instead I was the poor relation.
I spent most of the day on the ski hill with my niece and her husband, until an inopportune tangle of skiers at the lift put me and the millionaire on the same chair. He was a finance guy and not prone to chit-chat. Our moment of silence gave me time for some soul searching, which is what a broke person defaults to when sitting next to a millionaire. I was rewarded with a flash of clarity. I realized that I was doing exactly what a millionaire does. We were both sitting on the same chair lift at the same ski resort. We both had the outfits and the skis. In minutes, we would both attack the same slope. I took a quick inventory, and it turned out that his day was the same as my day. LOOK, MOM, I’M A MILLIONAIRE! (Provided I stay out of the Range Rover showroom.) I discovered that the only time I’m not a millionaire is when I shop—which is no big deal when you consider how infrequently I shop. Instantly I felt much better and started up a conversation with my chair partner. To my relief, he wanted to only talk about himself and cared nothing about my finances.
We never became friends, though a year later I was invited to his mansion for lunch. I don’t know why I ever felt bad for not being established. As millionaires go, he was nowhere close to an established BBQer.
Into the Comfort Zone 