Dreams and aspirations
Brian Wilson
Growing up I had a friend, let’s call him Greg, because, well that is actually his name.
I would occasionally ride my bike over to Greg’s house to hang out. Like a lot of young boys, and even old ones, Greg was crazy about cars. In particular sleek, sexy sports cars like Lamborghinis and Porsche 911s.
At a time when your steady ride is a reliable Huffy single-gear bicycle, the idea of owning an exotic high performance sports car is a good dream to have. Greg would talk about how one day he would roll up in his “Lambo” with some super model in the passenger seat and buzz by our junior high school to rub it in to all the haters.
I am guessing that it was a fairly common teenager fantasy, and other than changing out the model of the car is probably still a standard fair for a lot of teenagers.
While the dream of fast cars and faster women sounds appealing to a 14-year-old who has had no experience either with driving or building up the courage to talk to a girl, the practical considerations of making such life choices needs to be considered. The average annual maintenance cost of a Lamborghini is about $5,000 and we won’t even go into the upkeep costs of high maintenance girlfriends. Let’s just disregard the fact that at 14 you wouldn’t have more than a theoretical knowledge of what to do with either the fancy car or the super model girlfriend.
Lamborghini dreams are all well and good, but in the cold harsh light of day you are left with a car and someone upset at you for spending more time with your car than on maintaining a relationship. You couldn’t even relax in taking your Lambo to the grocery store for fear of someone touching it or ramming a cart into it.
I would listen to Greg’s dreams of owning a Lambo and would make the appropriate appreciative comments when he would unfurl a new poster to hang up in his room. While I could appreciate all the curves, a dry part of my mind would question the practicality of it all.
Most of us eventually grow out of our Lamborghini dreams. Others channel their passion for automotive excellence into careers or hobbies working with cars. Still there is the lingering dream of what they would do if they “made it” either by winning the lottery or some other means.
As I have gotten older and more boring, I have given this considerable thought. I still wouldn’t know what to do with a high performance sports car and would look silly trying to squeeze into one.
My aspirations are much more basic ones of ensuring my family has a roof over our heads, food on the table, having reliable vehicles to drive and being able to go to bonspiels on a regular basis.
That said, I still persist in my dream to be come a “sockinaire.” Sockinaire status would be the level of never having to wear a pair of socks more than once.
While admittedly extremely wasteful, just imagine a life without having to sort socks as you put away laundry.
Having done about 3 minutes worth of research, I have come to the conclusion that being a sockinaire is actually not that far fetched. Basic socks start at under a dollar a pair and double that if you want to get a little swoosh logo on them. Other novelty socks and specific purpose ones might have a higher price tag, but for our purposes we will assume an average of $2.50 a pair. At 365 days a year this would be $912.50 to never have to sort socks. For ease of math let’s round this up to $1,000 a year because you might want to splurge and go for fancy socks every now and then.
To put this in perspective, industry studies report that coffee drinkers between the ages of 25-34 years spend about $2,000 per year on coffee with people ages 35-44 spending $1,400 on coffee. Presumably they need all this extra caffeine to keep up with sorting socks.
With proper budgeting priorities it may be possible to achieve sockinaire status, or at least it gives a goal to work for.
Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.
