The Sneetches of Southern California

One of my favorite stories from my childhood is the Dr. Seus (Theodor Seuss Geisel) story about the Sneetches. (BTW, the proper German pronunciation for his pen name, his mother's maiden name, is "zoice".)

For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it's about these furry creatures in which half of their population has a star on their belly and the other half doesn't. The star-belly Sneetches thought they were special and looked down on the plain-belly Sneetches. Not only did the star-belly Sneetches showed distain for the plain-belly Sneetches, they excluded the plain-belly Sneetches from their activities.

Then, a guy named Sylvester McMonkey McBean came along with a machine that can put stars on the belly of the plain-belly Sneetches and offered to do so for a fee. Of course, all the plain-belly Sneetches gladly paid the fee for the opportunity to be elevated into ranks of the star-belly Sneetches.

To retain their exclusivity, the original star-belly Sneetches paid McBeam to remove the star from their belly. So, the new plain-belly Sneetches who were the original star-belly Sneetches continued to look down on the new star-belly Sneetches who were the original plain-belly Sneetches.

So the new star-belly Sneetches had their star removed, followed by the new plain-belly Sneetches having a star put back on.

This cycle of star placement and removal continues until all the Sneetches went broke and McBean has all their money.

While I enjoy the humor in this children story, I enjoy even more watching it played out in real life. No matter where I travel, each society has its own icon of exclusivity.

Nowhere is it more prevalent than in the youth culture of Southern California. There, the icon, for the young women, is the designer label outfits and fashion accessories. For the guys, it's the cars.

I know these four guys who took it to a very bizarre extreme. They wanted a car that would outclass the vehicles of all their peers. In fact, they wanted a machine that none of their peers can come close to even competing with. They wanted a Lamborghini Diablo.

These babies, even pre-owned, go for at least two hundred thousand dollars each. They couldn't afford the forty thousand dollar down payment much less the six years of monthly payments.

However, they realized two important things. While each of them, by himself, could not possibly come up with the forty thousand dollar down payment, they could pool all their savings together and come up with the sum. The second thing that they realized is that if they fail to make the monthly payment, the lending institution would not repossess the car for at least three or four months.

And yes, that's exactly what they did. They pooled their savings to make the down payment and scheduled the usage of the car between themselves for the four months before it's repossessed.

And for those four months, they had the ultimate star on their belly.