Poor Little Rich Kid: Life Among Have Nothing Snobs

From 1999 – 2003, I attended New College of Florida (NCF). A liberal arts college with a history of rigorous academics fueled by personal passions, throwing legendary parties that attracted triple the school’s entire enrollment, and angering conservative talking heads who have heard of it (not many),NCF is a unique little institution. Like many of its graduates, I dearly love my alma mater, New College of Florida. I’ve loved it ever since I was in second grade and my grandmother and mother took me to visit the campus – I remember ending our tour on the bay and sitting in the shade of large stained glass domes that were someone’s thesis project. My love only grew when I was eight years old and received a letter from the admissions board suggesting that perhaps I should wait until I completed elementary school to apply again. (They also refunded the application fee I submitted and complemented the markers, crayons, and stickers I had used to make my first attempt at applying extra fabulous.) On graduation day, there was no prouder graduate that me to be joining a larger family of novo collegian alumni.

However, though I always felt like I belonged at the place, I noted quickly that there were a large number of people who didn’t feel that I belonged. The first lesson I learned at New College wasn’t about American Literature or Ancient Cultures or Art History. No, the first lesson I learned at New College was about social dynamics. Mainly, it was my sudden emersion in a group of people I like to call “have nothing snobs” – or HNSs for short. These are not garden variety hippies and vagabonds. These are people who purposefully throw out all their possessions – save for maybe a brand-new Volkswagen Bug or Apple computer – and live as if they had nothing while sleeping nightly with the security blanket of family wealth and support. They replace their material wealth with passive judgment for those around them who live, in their estimation, menial lives. Though I was always on the lower end of the economic spectrum growing up, my compulsory schooling had exposed me to several run-of-the-mill snobs. You know, the type that had compact disc players when everyone else was still listening to cassettes and would roll their eyes and sigh loudly whenever someone wore knock-off brand tennis shoes in their presence – as if the sight of cheap factory stitching was literally straining them physically.

HNSs are different. They may have started out with a set of parents who set the silver spoon in their mouth, but they now disown the spoon, and everything that comes with it, for a life filled with dreadlocks, rope sandals, and a holier-than-thou attitude save for the religious overtones that usually accompany that sort of thing. Their lawyer and doctor parents fret over their sloppy appearance, their grandparents worry that they are becoming bisexuals, and their friends back home really miss them at the annual Christmas mixer. Meanwhile, you find them at a drum circle that’s, “totally going to change the whole way you see the world, man.”

So, yeah, they’re stoned, too.

They eat out of garbage cans, calling themselves freegans, while simultaneous biting the hands that fill those cans with caustic words about consumer waste and the death of true community. Obviously, eating in the school cafeteria – with food cards each student was required to purchase – was a large contributor to the downfall of decency and goodness. They sit and complain about how their parents, “don’t get it,” and what and idiot their mother was when she tried to make a vegan cake and dared to use refined, white sugar. Bitch!

HNSs don’t do a lot of things. They don’t shop, watch television, talk on the telephone, or go to the movies – social action doesn’t leave them time for such trivial things. They don’t recognize the stupidity that is organized religion and they scoff many common social practices as they aren’t part of “the machine.” Most importantly, though most don’t have jobs that pay in things other than hugs and warm fuzzies, those on the docket wouldn’t be caught dead working for anyplace that couldn’t be described as “quirky” – - or at least any place that would make them stifle their individuality by forcing them to cover up their Che Guevara tattoo. My Hertz Rental Car uniform now produced the same reaction that my off-brand sneakers had just a few years before. These snobs may swear off deodorant, but they obviously didn’t lose that yacht club classism.

I harbored some resentment toward the HNSs for a while. I hated them for bursting the bubble of my utopia with their spoiled attitudes and barbs of judgment. However, one Christmas, I had an epiphany. Sitting behind my desk at the rental car agency on Christmas Eve like some dejected Ebenezer Scrooge, there wasn’t a customer in sight. I decided to break protocol and call my mom on the company phone. I missed her so much and it was really jerking my chain that all the HNSs were probably at home right now complaining to their moms and dads about how the tofu in the cafeteria wasn’t certified fair trade. However, once I got on the phone with my mom, I couldn’t stop talking about them. The hippie who picked his toe jam with his feet on the desk in my American Literature class, the girl who slapped me on the back of the head for hurting the soul of a tree by driving a thumbtack into it, the couple who sang Lauren Hill songs in the nude on their balcony to show the ridiculousness of consumer culture . . . I couldn’t shut up about them. My mom listened as I rattled on and said, “You’re sure meeting some entertaining people.” That was the truth – staring me in the face. As chaffed as I was by them, they gave my college life flavor and a particular brand of absurd variety that really couldn’t be achieved in any other circumstance.

Additionally, for as annoying as HNSs were, they seemed to provide just the right anti-establishment backdrop for my dearly loved school to exist. They marched into self-righteousness with enough rigor and enthusiasm to allow the rest of us to become sometimes inspired. The luxury they had of spending entire semesters with loads of free time not spent doing laundry or punching a time card, allowed them to do some good works in the community themselves. The often secret promise from the parents to support – financially and emotionally – their junior Marxist should he or she run into some trouble, made the HNSs feel so comfortable taking risks that they were able to lead the marches, sing the chants, and really give it a go at sticking it to the man.

HNSs may have made some of my moments uncomfortable at points. Their misunderstandings of actual poverty often lead to pretty comical irony. I can’t imagine college without them.

Is The Bro Still Alive?

I truly value my college years, especially during my undergrad in Orlando. My time at the University of Central Florida was one of the most enlightening experiences in my life. Within those four years, I became fully aware of how much I didn’t know about anything, let alone what I THOUGHT I knew about my passions, film and literature. I was so eager to soak in all the knowledge my ripe brain could absorb. I remember vividly driving to school and being excited about going to class; I actually LOOKED FORWARD to school, a sensation I never possessed before. Every semester I made sure that I had one or two film theory classes, a lit class, a writing class, and a philosophy class to keep me invigorated.

On top of going to class full time every semester (including summer: I was, after all, double majoring), I worked part-time as a manager at a video store (an awful chain that rhymes with “Lackluster”). With that kind of heavy workload, I was very particular about how I spent my free time when I wasn’t at school, at work, or doing homework.

My extracurricular activities consisted of: playing trivial pursuit; partaking in Mario Kart tournaments; going to [Read more]