Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 28

Seated, waiting for the announcement to begin boarding the plane, I noticed for the first time the sign. It had two arrows. One pointed the way for Elite Access, the other for General Boarding. I cracked a slight smile and made a slight groan. I would rather lie down on a bed of nails than stand in a line marked “Elite.” I confess that may reveal something deficient about me.

This economy ticket holder, seated in General Boarding three rows behind the plane’s Elite, got to observe the pampering going on up there. First, their own private steward whispered with a smile to those of us seated in the cheap seats not to use their bathroom, located just inside the elite section, but to utilize the bathroom in the back of the plane. Then she pulled a thin veil to separate them from us, and latched a rope across the entrance to their section, just in case we forgot. The elite had paid much more for their seats, procuring not just perks of wine and leg room and fluffed pillows, but separation from the riff-raff.

I have since learned that two hundred years ago the French traveled long distances in a covered vehicle called a diligence, which was a glorified stagecoach pulled by five horses. It could carry up to eighteen people. There was room for three elite in the front seat, six middle class in, of course, the middle seat, and six poor people in the back of the coach. An additional two or three— the poorest poor—could be piled on top with the baggage.

Elitism gone to seed is self-righteous arrogance, based on the fiction that money or education or power or bloodline makes us organically different from the proletariat.

I am going to stick with the old proverb that, after the game, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.