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Maxed out - One's place in life

Well, the party’s over. I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t a surprise party. I’m not at all sure I could have done a surprise party with the grace and aplomb expected of the surprisee.

Well, the party’s over. I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t a surprise party. I’m not at all sure I could have done a surprise party with the grace and aplomb expected of the surprisee. The gushing, ohmigod-you-shouldn’t-have look of genuine surprise and elation in finding what you thought was going to be a quiet, intimate dinner is actually an ambush by half-drunken friends expecting you to wet yourself when they jump out from the shadows and throw a cardiac arrest into your aging ticker.

But the deed is done. The hushed conversations, secret e-mails, conspiracies cloaked in darkness have ended. I managed to keep my clothes on all night, didn’t go home with either a new tattoo or a woman who wasn’t my Perfect Partner; don’t remember embarrassing myself to the point where I’ll have to leave town quickly, and hopefully thanked everyone who was kind enough to show up and wish me well; if not, thank you all. That being said, everything else about life – and the evening – continues to be a mystery.

Well, almost everything. I am overjoyed by a recent revelation that’s come my way. If I were absolutely honest – and wouldn’t that make for pretty tepid columns – I would have to admit that on the Philosophical Continuum, I do not score too high on the What’s the Meaning of Life scale. I’ve always adhered to the You’re Born, You Die school of thought and whatever happens between those two bookends can pretty neatly be summed up by whistling Que Sera, Sera.

Now, sliding into my second half-century, I can happily embrace dotage secure in the knowledge I fully know my place in the world, my station in life. Many believe even the idea of one’s "place" in the warp and weave of our social fabric is a quaint holdover from Victorian times when one wouldn’t think of aspiring to rise above one’s station, set as it was by the crapshoot of birth. After all, the march of social justice for the last hundred years has been all about freeing us from the rigid strictures of class. The overwhelming success of our experiment in classlessness can be witnessed in examples such as asocial geeks becoming dot.com billionaires or southern whiteboy trailer trash being elected president of the US or a mean-spirited man suffering a facial disfigurement becoming Prime Minister of the Great White North, eh?

Despite these anomalies – and after all, it is the exceptions that prove the rule – class continues to hold tightly to the reins of power and there is more than a bit of truth in the old homily about the rich being different from the rest of us. They are; and they rarely miss a chance to remind us. They’ve all gone to that secret finishing school where they learn the Shriveling Stare, the Unctuous Smile, and the Impatiently-Patient Pose, not to mention how to look down their noses without actually crossing their eyes.

I owe this life-defining revelation to the most unexpected of sources: Maggi Thornhill. Maggi is a realtor in town and a highly successful one at that. Her smile and bright eyes have been a fixture in weekly real estate ads for as long as I can remember although I’ve never personally met her. She is, no doubt, one smart cookie and I’ve been aware of her marketing panache for some time now. Her usual offerings are million-dollar-plus homes although last week she was pushing a 500G charity case in Peckerwood.

Maggi was quoted two weekend’s ago in a Globe and Mail piece written by Alexandra Gill for the travel section. It was one of those iron fist-velvet glove, Canadian kind of pieces where writers with a passing knowledge of their subject strive mightily to denigrate anything Canadian that smacks of success. On the whole, it was a pretty balanced story about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, that being the skiing, the prices and the rowdy college crowd, respectively.

In a few paragraphs dealing lightly with the issue of affordability and the Aspenization of Whistler, Maggi took the fer side – as in fer or agin – on the issue of large homes. Maggi is fer large homes, cathedral ceilings, mink coats and Jags. This is not to suggest she is agin affordable homes. I’m sure Maggi is an equal-opportunity realtor.

It was in her rationalization of large homes the lightbulb clicked on inside my head. Maggi was quoted as saying, "The people who come here need four or five bedrooms – they have to have space for their children, their grandchildren, friends who visit and the help."

Eureka, dude!

I have found my place in Whistler. Ich bin ein help! We have met the domestics and they are us.

When it comes to Maggi’s usual clientele profile, I need not apply. Even assuming one morning I woke up and found I’d miraculously chosen the right six numbers and had won a gillion loto-dollars, my first thought would probably not be to call up Maggi and go look at a couple of post and beam show homes. I tend to live small. It’s an affliction for which there is probably a 12-Step program but que sera, sera.

And through an unfortunate act of birth, I am not the child of fabulously rich parents. Good parents, even great parents, yes, but rich parents, only in ways not associated with Charles Schwab, trust funds and inheritances so burdensome they’re referred to as legacies.

Ditto my grandparents. My only surviving granny is a monthly financial burden on my father because her husband, my father’s father, believed money was an evil conspiracy fostered by greedy governments, fat-cat factory owners and the Evil whose name was never spoken: Republicans.

And while I do have a few friends who are rich enough to afford a Whistler retreat, sadly, none of them are infected with the ski bug. One of them has a fabulous "cottage" on Georgian Bay and another has a posh retreat on Long Boat Key. As Friend of the Rich, I have availed myself of their hospitality as often as I can think up witty stories to keep them amused but generally, I do not fall into Maggi’s "friend" category.

That only leaves The Help. I am The Help. I never thought of myself that way but it puts so much into its proper perspective. Most of us living here are The Help. We labour on the ski hills, in the restaurants, grocery and liquor stores, we’re the rent-a-nannies, temporary toilet cleaners, lawn boys, hot tub scrubbers and gardeners. We don’t make enough to rise above our station and just enough to continue to live here and feed our addiction to Whistler White. It all makes so much sense.

It is a happy man who knows his place. I think Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus said that while he was passing out axehandles to white supremacists.