GIVE ME A BREAK:A FEW YEARS AGO, when my son was six years old, I got a "new" (four-year-old) car. When I picked him up from soccer, he said proudly to his friends: "That's my dad's new car." (He was at the age when this had to be Dad's new car, not Mom's, even though Mom and Dad shared it and still do), writes Kate Holmquist
One of his six-year-old friends assessed our 1999 Japanese hatchback before stating: "That's not a new car. It's a 1999. Last century. And it's crap." Then he climbed into his father's big, black, shiny and brand-new top-of-the-line German tank for the journey home to his parents' equally shiny brand-new bunker.
Five years later, we still have the car and my son has kept his well-won dignity, having dealt with several such competitive episodes over the years.
It's the other kid I feel sorry for. I hope his dad isn't one of those men who now finds himself stripped by the bank and working out of his car.
Another fellow I know of is in just this situation. He has cashflow problems. He made a mint in property, but now that the boom's over the bank won't advance him the money to pay his staff and office expenses - so he's had to let them all go. Not only the staff but the office too, the place he strode into in his nice suit with a cup of coffee waiting and a staff to greet him each morning.
This month, as opposed to last, his office consists of himself, his car and a mobile phone. You can imagine him there, sitting in his big, black, shiny German beast working his phone, parked at the far end of the Lidl lot, or on the verge of the road, or even - and I wouldn't wish it on him - on the verge of breakdown.
Can't say I feel sorry for him either. He's flexible and a survivor, I imagine. His employees, now let go, are in a more difficult situation.
There seems to be poetic justice in the fact that guys who creamed it during the boom are now finding themselves with nothing but their cars, their mobile phones and their sales talk. A nation of salesmen is what we became during those boom years, when members of the club made fortunes and the rest of us just watched in awe, living vicariously off other people's celebrity and financial success.
Maybe we shouldn't have encouraged them, because we're showing these people no pity now. In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller created the character of Willy Loman, a salesman down on his luck who decides to end his life after his family discovers that his successful career on the road is a sham. He brags that after his "massive" funeral the life insurance money he leaves his family will make them rich. His son Ben tells him that suicide is "a cowardly thing". Willy answers: "Why? Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero?" Yes, actually, it does take more guts to work out of your car, even if it means ringing up zeros because the property market and the building business and three-quarters of small businesses are so stretched that, as a UCD report predicts, they may go to the wall.
Redemption comes not in saving this old way of life, but in knowing, as Miller writes, that any one of us is "a dime a dozen". We're just not that important. Money may have made us feel important, but when the money is gone, and we're gone, we stand accused of having "had the wrong dreams . . . All, all, wrong".
My son dreams of being a rock musician. An accountant I know tells me that this is a darn fine dream to have, considering that the accountancy isn't going to get him any farther. But even if he never makes a career of it, my son has the pleasure of playing the drums, the piano and the guitar in jam sessions with accomplished musicians every Sunday rather than doing it vicariously through Guitar Heroon PlayStation. When he plays, he is a hero, not a vicarious one.
My son has just discovered his own mortality. We talk about it a lot before bedtime, during our usual routine of telling each other stories. Last night, he said: "Mom, this is our one and only life. We have to make the most of every minute." My beautiful son - whose humour and imagination thrill me when we tell each other those stories - has had to do without the impressive Daddy car and Xbox Live and a lot of other things he has wanted. But his eyes still light up when I tell him a story. He has a dream. And he knows that life is for living, not for owning.
I think of that guy I know of working out of his car with only his mobile phone to keep him connected to the world. I hope that his son doesn't feel ashamed. I think of Willy Loman saying: "You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away. A man is not a piece of fruit." We've been treated, by our "success"-driven economic system, as pieces of fruit, and now that the banks are taking a hit, the salesmen have been pulped and are left only with their skins.
What are we going to do now? Stop seeing people as economic units to be plundered? Start once again to see people as individuals, peels and all? Will we nurture our education system instead of cutting teachers? And will we pull back from the suicide that Willy chose, and nurture the next generation so that they too can have their dreams in this one and only life?
