"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

I was brushing my teeth today when I got to thinking about that quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wasn’t actually brushing my teeth; I was squeezing the toothpaste out of the tube. But that’s just when the idea popped into my head. I did most of the thinking about it as I was brushing my teeth so I guess that what I said in the first sentence is accurate. My electric toothbrush goes for two minutes before it stops so I also had time to think about where I was going to watch tonight’s football match between Valencia CF and Schalke 04. I’ll probably go back to my old neighborhood and watch it at one of my old haunts, although I watched the Spain/Russian European basketball final at a cool sports-oriented bar in my new neighborhood. Anyway, rich people probably get rich because they can keep a single thought in their head for longer than it takes to brush their teeth.

The rich probably don’t bother squeezing their toothpaste from the bottom like you are supposed to do. This insures that all of the toothpaste comes out. Rich people probably just squeeze the tube anywhere they feel like squeezing it. “Fuck it,” they probably say to themselves, or to their butlers, “I’ll just buy another tube.” Not me, I’m a bottom squeezer. In fact, I have been doing such a heroic job of getting everything out of this particular tube that I have probably expended more effort than they did trying to save those coal miners. It’s not like things are so bad here financially at Leftbanker Industries; that’s just the way I was brought up I suppose.

If you are brought up to be a bottom squeezer, then you will probably remain one for life. Even if I won a $300 million lottery I’m sure that I’d still be a bottom squeezer. Just because I have a few extra bucks in my wallet I’m supposed to get all Kennedy Compound wasteful and grab a tube of toothpaste and squeeze it any place that rocks my boat? Why don’t I just take up playing Russian roulette while I’m at it. Why don’t I put two bullets in the gun just to make things more interesting? I certainly can afford another bullet.

Like hell I’ll squeeze from anywhere but the bottom, you name brand, albacore-tuna eating jackass. Listen Mister “I always order appetizers with my meal even in expensive restaurants,” there is a reason people squeeze from the bottom. People like you and the “I leave the shower on even while I am shampooing my hair” crowd really make me sick. What happens when the world’s supply of toothpaste has been depleted? You’ll be wishing that you had some of that toothpaste stuck at the bottom of all of those tubes you carelessly flung into the trash after groping them any which way, like a teenager on his first date.

Listen rich boy, I know that you think that you are better than me because you don’t make your girlfriend hide in the trunk when you go to a drive-in (Esther, I said I was sorry for forgetting you were in there until after the first feature, but admit it, Big Mama’s House isn’t your kind of movie anyway). Rich boy, I know you feel superior because you have never forced one of your own children to fake an epileptic seizure in front of your building just to distract the pizza delivery guy from the 30 Minutes or It’s Free place. But I have something that you will never have: It’s called dignity.