Friday, September 18, 2009

Son, its okay to own a Bentley

A wise and wealthy man once told me, "You can own a Bentley if you really want to, but its definitely not okay to take it out of your garage." Years ago, this man's father had said this to him upon discovering that his son had purchased a $450K car. The son came from a wealthy family, but had made this money on his own from his jewelry business. I think he made his first million independent of his parents by the time he was 17. I can respect that. If I remember correctly this man's father had also made a similar mistake when he purchased a Ferrari back in the 60s and his father told him an almost identical thing.
Bentleys are for companies that Chauffeur to assure their clients that they will be taken around in style or for people with lots of disposable wealth to assure other people that they do, indeed, have lots of disposable wealth. So, knowing these things and reflecting upon the advice, would you really ever want to own a Bentley? Somehow, I think this advice will never be directly applicable to me, but I can see the principle and I think its good.
Today I gave myself this advice, "Its impolite and may lead to trouble if you shake your head at and 'booooo' owners of Bentleys on the freeway." This particular Bentley owner was definitely not a Chauffer based on his attire, age and style of the Bentley. So, as I passed I expressed my discontent and was a bit delighted to see the driver become furious. He started following me quite close and made a very rude hand gesture. This went on for at least a minute, when to my surprise, he exited at my exit. This is surprising, because this em effer does not belong in the hood, he ain't never been to the hood and if he thinks he is gonna come to my hood and try to cause me trouble, he's got another thing coming. I grew up here. Home Court Advantage. He continued the tailgating. For a brief second I though about how wonderful it would be to see his Bentley all tore up from having rear ended my little truck, but that was obviously a bad idea (very funny visual image, though). After it seemed he was not going to give up his chase and I realized I did not have time or gas to make this guy follow me out to Wendover at 20mph below the posted 65 mph speed limit (which is how I dealt with the only other follower I'd had) I had a better idea. I turned off onto a gravel road used for canal maintenance I used to explore as a kid and I gunned the engine. This kicked up a lot of rocks and dust; certainly not enough to work as an effective smoke screen, but just enough to make that fellow consider what people would think of his income if his finish got dirty or, worse yet, nicked. I am glad it wasn't too much dirt, because it would have been sad if I'd missed seeing him turn around in the rear view mirror. But really, its not okay to shake your head and "boooooo" people on the freeway, lesson learned.

P.S. If I ever spend $450K (adjusted for inflation, of course) or more on anything that doesn't have a very good probability of making money for me, please slap, kick, bite, punch and/or shame me back to my senses.

2 comments:

tiger lily said...

Humorous. Excellent use of semi-colons.

He knew you were right. Yeah, he took it hard, it cut him deep...and even to the very center.

Starman said...

I like that YOU comment on MY blog.