Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Shhh! - Keep It To Yourself

Sometimes you just screw up and things slip out. That seems to be Chris Perry's problem. Chris and the other Perrys live in the prosperous St. Albert district north of Edmonton. Chris seems to like living on "the right side of the tracks." He likes it enough that when word got out that Habitat for Humanity was planning to develop a low-income housing project in St. Albert, Chris and Karleena penned an angry letter to their local paper.

"The average family income for St. Albert is higher than in Edmonton or any other area municipality. We moved to St. Albert because we can afford it and we deserve it. This is a great city with great families. We feel comfortable joining in activities we would not have considered in Edmonton."

"...This development is a bad idea for St. Albert for both current residents and the people who will occupy the new development. Current residents will have to deal with the likeliness of children influenced by crime in our schools and adults in our community. Our cost of living will increase as we will have to pay for low-income subsidies due to higher school fees or other taxes.

"...We won't feel comfortable taking our kids to activities like movie night in the park or other St. Albert events for fear that there will be unruly families. We can assure each other that measures will be taken to prevent this influence, but that's not what we want ."

Chris and Karleena's expression of Social Darwinism sparked a wave of outrage that had Chris backpedalling just as fast as his tiny legs would spin. Chris has figured out that you can think these things, you can share them with your neighbours but, whatever you do, don't write what's on your mind in a letter to the editor. Hell people might get the wrong idea about you.

One last thing Chris, don't get too carried away with yourself. After all you did marry somebody named "Karleena."

1 comment:

ck said...

Hell people might get the wrong idea about you.

Perhaps we have exactly the right idea of those social climbing rednecks.

I read that he owns a janitorial service. I wonder how many of his underpaid employees caught wind of their boss's true feelings about them and their children?

As for me, I remembered years ago, when I was 14; we lived in a diverse neighbourhood; the kind where for 3 blocks it's middle-class and past those 3 blocks, you fall into the working class part.

I took up cigarettes. Yes, like so many other teen-agers, I tried pot and alcohol.

My dad, unhappy with the kids from the neighbourhood I was hanging with, decided not only to forbid this 'rif-raf' from further 'corrupting' his daughter, but he joined a swanky yacht club where there were plenty of private school educated kids. The right influence, or so my dad thought.

Turned out that in addition to these preppy snoots who all had alligators or that polo man on their overpriced clothes, best high school educations their mommies and daddies can buy were also very bored and for the most part, very unhappy kids with too much of daddy's money at their disposal. What do you think happened?

I found they had serious substance abuse problems like alcoholism, but also access to more expensive drugs like acid and cocaine.

Now, who was more harmless?

At least the neighbourhood kids, while less affluent, didn't have nearly the access to their parents' money, largely in part, because they couldn't afford it, but also, they had part-time jobs like babysitting and newspaper delivery. As such, I think the neighbourhood kids had a better sense of the value of a dollar than their wealthy counterparts.

So sad, a culture that worships the rich for some unexplained reason. That a person's values are measured by their wallet size.

Unfortunately, as of late, this Perry idiotic elitist is not alone.