THE TRIUMPH OF MACARONI AND CHEESE

A few weeks ago I had a random discussion with one of my friendlier co-workers. Not surprisingly (since I just returned from my vacation/time with niece and nephew), we started discussing baby-sitters. I told him that my sister was in the process of looking for one, and one of the candidates recommended to her was usually working in Manhattan, hence her asking price for $20 per hour for two kids. I jokingly remarked that that was more than I was making, to which my sister remarked that I should think of a career change; my co-worker seconded the motion after I retold him this story.

That remark started an interesting discussion of its own. I replied that I am not dying to become a babysitter, because being responsible for somebody else's kids, especially tots, is not worth any amount of money. Plus, I added, working with their parents is usually no mean feat also. Since we were talking about Manhattan prices, he assumed that I was talking about Manhattan parents (even though I meant the ones in my sister's neighbourhood actually), and so he told me the following story.

He and his wife have family friends, who, though being of middle class income, somehow managed to land themselves digs in the Upper East Side. The "matriarch" of the family (let's call her Amy) is usually being snubbed by the other mothers of her children's classmates. To compound the situation (or to make it ironic), her older daughter is absolute bosom buddies, or BFF, with the daughter of the chief snubber, so to speak.

One time Amy was babysitting her daughter's friends after school (although there was some kind of fancy name for it, something like "family sharing", basically, it was free babysitting). When the "chief snubber" came to repossess her progeny, she naturally inquired what was served for lunch. Imagine her horror at the response "Mac and cheese"!!! "All those carbs!" Now she hates the poor Amy not just for being beneath her financially, but also for introducing her daughter to peasant, full of carbs, but actually beneficial to growing children, food (which her daughter, of course, loved).

Why did I chose to re-tell this story, which my sister actually dubbed "one of the saddest" she had ever heard? You see, the cynical and the misanthropic part of me thinks that the bosom buddies situation between these two girls is an aberration due to their young age, and in a few years, once they become teenagers, the daughter of the chief snubber will become the part of the coolest crowd and will drop Amy's daughter like the proverbial hot potato. The idealist and the unbeatable romantic in me, on the other hand, says no, this is not an aberration. These two girls like each other despite the general air of bourgeois snobbery all around them. So maybe, the disgusting chain of snobbery will be broken by them. They will truly be best friends forever, support each other through all the ups and downs of their lives, and share many more bowls of macaroni and cheese.