𤯠INCRĂVEL: 53 Eye-Opening Moments That Made People Realize They Were Truly Spoiled đ˛
Oh Iâve told this story before many, many years ago.
For my 16th birthday my parents gifted me a red convertible but I legit threw a fit over it because the car was red and not blue. They kept the car for themselves and got me a new one. Just a small amount of context to show how spoiled I was.
Years later I needed volunteer hours for various college applications, etc etc. There was an 8-week summer camp that was perfect. 8 weeks as a counselor where I didnât really have to do anything? Sign me up.
This summer camp was hosted by Americorps. It served the under privileged in my area for free if the family couldnât afford it or for something $25 a week if they could.
There was this kid. Lovely little thing but they refused to take off their shoes. Going to the pool for the day? Theyâd keep their shoes on. They were adamant about never taking off their shoes, almost combatant about it. We knew something was wrong then. When there was a quiet/nap time, I took the kid to the office of the person running the camp and just sat down to talk to them. We talked about a lot of stuff and then I was able to get them to open up about why they never took their shoes off.
Their shoes were 3 sizes too small. They took off their shoes and their socks were covered in old blood plus new blood. Their poor feet were wrecked from wearing these shoes for god knows how long. I grabbed a first aid kit then cleaned up his wounds the best I could and wrapped them in bandages. I threw his socks and shoes away.
On my lunch hour I sat in my car crying for what felt like hours. I got ittogether, went to a shoe store and bought them 3 pairs of shoes in 3 different sizes. One pair that fit them now and the other 2 as their feet grew.
It was such a harrowing, humbling moment. A huge wake up call. That camp taught me A LOT and I came away with a lot of stories much like that from many of the kids that attended the camp.
I spent 2 years as an Americorps, then joined their VISTA program for another year. I started volunteering to work with at risk kids. I became a âbig sisterâ. I did everything I could to give back to my community.
Itâs over 20 years later. I still volunteer and help whenever/however I can.
When I look back on myself from that time I canât believe how entitled and spoiled I acted/was. It was a life changing experience. One that I will **always** be thankful for.
First time flying economy. I asked the flight attendant where the button was to make the seat recline all the way down. She just stared at me. My friend next to me whispered ‘that’s… that’s not a thing in economy.’ I was 19 and genuinely didn’t know planes had different classes of service. I thought ‘business class’ was just a term for people traveling for work. The shame still haunts me.
When I went to University. Suddenly I realized that not everyone got their own car at 18 and went on vacations twice a year. Almost everyone had either taken out student loans or had to work part time. It was a real eye opener.
When I was like 8, my family had to wait in a long line for something. I don’t remember what for. I loudly asked my parents “Where is our line? This one is too long!”
Apparently I was so used to waiting in shorter VIP lines or skipping them entirely. Luckily my parents realized what I was growing into and stopped it before I got any worse.
On our family’s trips growing we always had a suite with single rooms, full kitchen and views…or our own entire room’s. We never had to share sleeping areas.
Freshman year of college I went on a beach trip with a group of guys and had to share rooms…I just acted normal but this was a very foreign concept to me.
I wasn’t super spoiled, but certainly didn’t grow up desperate.
My friend brough over his tent that he got for his birthday and my dog ruined it.
He was very upset, and I didn’t understand why.. “Your parents can just get you a new one, what’s the big deal?” was my thought.
Then I went to his house shortly after and for our lunch we split 1 can of tuna fish and a lot of mayo on thin white bread between 6 people.
That’s when I realized why I had a Super-Goose and he had a 4th time handed down thrift store Huffy.
It was when I asked a friend what his parents were getting him for his ‘half-birthday’ and he just stared at me like I had three heads. That was the moment I realized that getting a $200 gift every 6 months just for existing wasn’t a universal human experience.
It’s not that great of a story but when I was growing up my parents could afford for me to play any sport, instrument, or whatever other hobby I’d like. When I was around 12 I was listening to a friend say she was deciding between volleyball and soccer. I was like, why don’t you do both? And she said “Because I can’t afford it” in a way that she was irritated with my obliviousness. That little exchange truly changed my perspective and made me realize not only that I had the privilege of my parents being able to give me so much, but that other people could see what I had and know they didn’t. It made me feel so bad. Up until that the point it just felt like I was like everyone else and vice versa, but this interaction made me forever sensitive to and aware of financial privileges, wealth divides, so on.
I broke my fingernail at a friend’s bowling party. His dad went and grabbed fingernail clippers for me. I did not know how to use them because my parents had always cut my nails.
I was 19 and my card got declined at a gas station. Called my dad expecting him to fix it like he always did. He just said “yeah, that happens when you spend more than you have” and hung up. I sat in that parking lot for probably ten minutes before I understood what just happened.
For me, it was getting my first job in retail. I remember looking at a pair of shoes I wanted and realizing it would take me 3 full shifts of standing on my feet just to afford them. My parents used to just buy them for me without a word, and it hit me how much work Iâd actually been ‘skipping’ my whole life.
Did a group “privilige” exercise where the professor states a true or false (do your parents own land, for instance) and if its true to you, you step forward. If false, step backwardÂ
This was at a community College i was attending to supplement my transfer into a new uni.Â
I was just…. meters in front of the group. It ripped the edge lord libertarian right out of me.
When I thought we were middle class and found out my buddyâs dad left him all alone to raise a sister with no mother or phone or money at 17. Thatâs when I realized that I had a good life. Never wanted for anything. Parents always cared for me and paid for my college. I did not know struggle.
When the 2007 recession impacted gas prices, everyone was hurting except me. Gas money had never been an issue for meâthe issue is when the bill comes to my parents and it showed that I used the card in another city/state.
The second time was when a friend was excited to say that she staying in the nicest hotel she’s ever been in. I thought it was a motel room because I had only stayed in suites before.
My daughter just had a revelation about her privilegeâŚshe just had foot surgery so I made her cereal, and she complained about the amount of milk I put in.  When she asked why I was always so skimpy with it, I told her that when I was growing up we had to conserve the milk because if we ran out too early we might spend a week or two using water or eating it dry instead.  Her eyes got so huge.Â
On the other side, itâs weird when I realize how growing up poor is still affecting my behaviors.  The milk thing was something I didnât realize until she asked. .
Guys I dated in university being worried about meeting my family because they were from poorer backgrounds than me and thought my parents wouldnât approve. I thought it was silly until I introduced my now husband to my parents and they did in fact disapprove because of his background. They never had any issues with my ex who is from a wealthier family than mine despite the fact he is a complete idiot (a lovely idiot who I still get along with but an idiot nonetheless).
Iâve written about this before, I hope thatâs allowed.
Iâm from a third world country and when I was a kid, I can distinctly recall on the drive back home from dinner- we stopped at some traffic lights.
A beggar tapped on our drivers window, hoping for some change- even as a kid you learn to avert your gaze and itâs something you become sadly good at.
This time though I glanced up and we met eyes. I realised this beggar was just a kid, like me.
He my age, missing a hand and he was begging on the streets.
I started getting really upset and told mum to do something to help him and that it just wasnât fair.
I donât know what I expected- short of mum essentially kidnapping him hahaha.
Anyway, I continued to throw the biggest tantrum about how unfair it is until mum gave the boy all the cash she had in her wallet and we drove off.
I remember I had kept crying well after we had gotten home.
That was when mum explained the concept of privilege to me and the difference that made.
We had cleaners my whole life. I remember being very young and wondering why my friends parents were always cleaning around the house. When my friend said they didnât have a cleaner because they are expensive, I had a come to Jesus moment.
During my senior year of college at a small liberal arts school there was a mandatory financial meeting for all seniors a couple months before grad. After a couple things were discussed the speaker said that those with student loans were to stay to discuss how paying it back worked and those who didnât could leave.
Only 2 people left: me and the international student who exclusively only wore designer.
Yeah thatâs when it hit me.
Went to college, called my mom crying because the dining hall ran out of the pasta I liked. She didn’t say anything for a long moment, then just said “âŚokay honey.” That silence destroyed me more than any lecture could have.
For a while I didnât realize âprivate schoolâ meant my grandparents would pay 30k a year for me to go to a fancy high school. Had no idea you had to pay for it. I just thought you had to be âsmart enoughâ to get in and then everything was free.
I pretty quickly figured out this wasnât the case once I got to high school, made friends from other normal schools, and realized some of the dumbest people Iâve ever met went exclusively to private school their whole lives. Super embarrassing, I know.
Not me but I went to a private school and in my class we read a short story (cant remember what it was called) and it was about poverty and my teacher says basically “no offense but you guys kinda live in a bubble” and one kid says word for word “I don’t live in a bubble, my family summers in Italy”.
Not me, but my boyfriend told me he had his first epiphany of how privelaged he was when he had to write college application essays about something that he had to overcome in life and he realized heâs never struggled before.
Not me, but I watched it happen in real time to my friend.Â
We were driving to Canada because a beer I designed the lable for was having a big launch party and my husband and said friend came with to celebrate. We were crossing the border and the car in front of us was more bondo and ductape than car.Â
Friend said out loud ” JESUS, why would you drive that around instead of just buying a new one?”
And we were like…cars are expensive man lol.Â
And he responded with “he can afford gas so he’s got a job, he can absolutely buy something that isn’t falling apart”
We asked him how much minimum wage was. The silence was deafening. He had no idea and “assumed” it was like $20+ an hr or something.Â
I grew up under the poverty line and spent many memorable years food insecure. Took the rest of the trip to explain how expensive it is to be poor. He looked like he swallowed a box of gravel and apologized for being so ignorant.
 Poor guy was truely mortified that he had no idea that some people drive beaters because it’s their only option and not because they are lazy or slobs đŹ.
Talking to customers where their utilities are getting cut off every other month makes me realize just having power and food in the fridge is a blessing even if you did have a bad childhood.
I wasnât spoiled with money, but I didnât realize how good my family was or at least didnât realize that other families werenât generous until my freshmen year of college. My car wouldnât start and it was dinner time and then I had to do a 2 hr tutoring job. I called my dad and he agreed the car needed a battery. I told him I could walk to work and get a ride home and the n to the shop the following am to buy a new one.
When I got back to my dorm my dad and grandpa were there installing a new battery. They had to drive over an hr to do that each way after 7 pm. I was grateful of course but I wasnât surprised because my family always did things like that. The other kids in the dorm just couldnât believe it. Then I saw how great my life really was and how my parents had truly sacrificed for us as had my grandparents too.
When I realized that not everyone went to Europe and cruises every yr plus belonging to multiple country clubs. My mom grew up in a VERY wealthy suburb just north of Chicago and didnt want us to grow up there bc she didnt like the snobby attitudes unfortunetly it just made us a huge target for bullying and being used in the area we moved to.
I had a totally normal middle class upbringing but my mum came from old money they had lost during the 2nd world war. This was a whole 10 years before she was even born but I never heard the end of it how poor we were in our squalor (we had a 2 bedroom apartment, quite comfortable for middle class out-in-the-sticks Western Europe. I canât afford that kind of apartment myself today!).
I got to have horseback riding as a hobby, we went on 2 week family vacations to different countries (though always by car), we always had everything but maybe not the latest brand clothes. We had two cars even, something quite unusual for 1980s-1990s average euro-joe.
And i literally grew up thinking we were poor because we didnât in fact live in a detached home with a front lawn.
Boy did my jaw drop when I went to college and saw actual poor! And I mean itâs still just Western European socially secure poor.
I also got upset with my mum for a long time for having created such a whiny, complainy backdrop to my perfectly normal childhood. I always felt lesser-than at school because I didnât have Leviâs or Doc Martens or Chucks.
Only way into my 20s did I learn that most kids in my school had part time jobs to afford those things and that most of my classmates had a lot more shrink wrapped lives. It had never even occurred to me to get a part time job, and neither did it occur to my parents. In their bubble, that simply just wasnât a thing.
My dad came from much, much poorer circumstances and I somehow donât know how he didnât take my mumâs constant âsqualorâ comments personally. Itâs not like my mum had even ever seen any riches, those were long gone by the time she was born but I guess she was raised with this inbred feeling of existing as âhave beensâ that my grandparents apparently never got over.
Probably not what you were looking for, but when I read someoneâs confession of hating girls who had dads⌠I realized I was lucky, because not only did I have a dad, but he went out of his way to make sure I woke up with breakfast every morning before school.
When I went to sleepovers at friends houses and realized that while they *did* have food on the tables every night. Their parents didn’t eat every nightđ. I knew we weren’t rich but I realized quite quickly that having 2 living rooms and pet birds and individual bedrooms for all 3 kids was firmly middle class luxuries that a lot of kids don’t get.
Not only did we go on 2-4 vacations a year, we had a beach house. I didn’t know the $300 in my wallet was more than most people had in the bank.
Everybody i knew did the same stuff so I really just thought it was normal.
When I started making friends outside of my family’s circle, it all started unraveling. When I started dating my first girlfriend at 15, I asked where her family spent the summer, hoped it was close to our place. She just stared at me like I was crazy. Her family didn’t go on many vacations, let alone have whole other house! I struggled with that, the idea that she stares at the same 4 walls basically every single night before bed… and I’m thinking of all the different places I had slept recently and all the different ceilings i had seen. It broke me for a bit. *she only likes this ceiling because she hasn’t seen any others, what if she sees another one and she likes it more? Am I still thinking about ceilings?*.
When my mom spent $700 on my prom dress back in like 2008. And I was a problem child. Like in no way did I deserve that.
This really could (should?) be contextualized around moments a person realizes they have privilege – it’s the same thing, but not the one specific privilege of having had wealth. Comparing these moments, realizing various positions of privilege, opens the door to personal growth.
For myself, I was spoiled in one specific way – my parents paid for my college education. I didn’t realize how rare that was until well after college, having conversations with people around their student loans. Granted, I worked part or full time the whole time, to feed and house myself, so my 4 year degree actually took 6. But I got out scot-free and was able to buy my first house the year I graduated, 2003. What a huge difference that wealth has meant to me since then. I’ve housed several friends who needed to crash and save money for a while.
When my father passed away and his sister said ânoâ to something I asked for. That was the first time in my life I heard that word.
I didnât know we were supposed to sell the little catalog items in school. I just showed my family and they took care of it (wrote a check to the school). So I always âwonâ whatever booster thing the schools would put on. Iâm sorry. I really didnât know.
Not me but my brother⌠when he was in his like 9th rehab, a state run place in Mississippi I think. I got a call from his counselor trying to get me to come there for in person therapy session . Iâd need to fly and take off work and miss pay, as I didnât have PTO and find childcare as I was a single mom at the time. Counselor and brother still insisted I must go to help his recovery. He didnât understand why I couldnât just up and go. ( he was a former doctor in Los Angeles drove a Porsche etc) then the shocker ⌠they wanted to discuss my brothers upbringing as he told the counselor he had a rough time with my dad ( who has since passed away) not being sympathic to my brother having to deal with our underprivileged background. Counselor was a bit surprised to hear about our â poor â upbringing. My father owned restaurants , drove a Cadillac , with a 3 bedroom home in the town ranked #1 in school system. My brother traveled to Europe twice before he graduated HS, had college paid for and was gifted a car when he turned 17. We were NOT poor. However my brothers response was that his friends got Mercedes and he got my moms old Nissan and Ford. He had designer clothes but his friends had custom clothes and got to travel to Europe every summer not just twice and go skiing in aspen in winterâŚ. He learned right there he was indeed spoiled. I still donât think he accepts it .
After my mum passed away.
I found out my Dad had been cheating on her while she was sick, and cut contact with him (after being physically assaulted by him and discovering he was comitting probate fraud too).
Cutting contact meant cutting off all and any financial support etc. Found out real quick how spoilt I was then.
We ate out for dinner at restaurants 3-5 times a week. Garunteed on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Mom, Dad, me and sister.
Most of my friends never did or only for special occasions.
The realization grew when I reflected on that I never had a spending limit or menu section to stick to. Many times I was at a different part of the table than my parents. So 10 year old me would order an appetizer, main course, drinks, dessert and it was never brought up.
Add new cars at 16, 19⌠my never wear something twice mantraâŚ
Clearly spoiling was happening.
My parents always said we were poor. We ate out sometimes and had a house and car and decent clothes and money to spend for movies.
I went to a friends place and she apologized for not feeding me because they were running out of bread till next payday.
When I was in my early 20’s in NYC, I told a group of new friends how my favorite meal of my life was made by my housekeeper growing up.
*That’s* a way to screech a conversation to a halt.
I went to buy a violin as an adult cause I missed playing it as a kid.
It was like 600CAD minimumâŚ
wth my dad just spend 600CAD on a kid!?
Also pianos cost HOW MUCH?!
Not THE moment but one of them.
When my boyfriend at the time paid for his own meal and i was SHOCKED. like genuinely confused that he didnt expect someone else to cover it. grew up with parents who paid for literally everything and it took dating someone from a normal family to realize that not everyones parents hand them a credit card at 16.
Growing up, the only restaurant my family and I regularly went to was the country club, where my grandfather always ordered off-menu. We would go for dinner and he would get a Belgian waffle and eggs Benedict, neither of which were on the menu. They always served it to him with a smile and an, âof course, sir!â I thought this was normal so I followed suit and would essentially make up food that I wanted based off of ingredients I saw on the menu. I thought this was totally normal until I was embarrassingly old and it hit me that you canât just do that at a normal restaurant. Itâs still embarrassing to remember the times I would confidently ask for absurd substitutions at restaurants because I knew they had it âin stockâ.
When I met my *now* husband, he took me to Michigan for a family reunion (which was a 12 hour drive from where we lived). I told him Iâd never been in the car for more than 3 hours and he looked at me like I was crazy. My family had always flown everywhere when I was growing up.
Iâm in my late 30s and have had my first real job for about 3 years now. Yeah, itâs embarrassing. I got cut off like 6 years ago. And had/have no idea how to function in life. Itâs getting better but I still canât keep up with the schedule of paying my bills regularly and stuff like that.
I wouldnât call it spoiled so much as âprivilegedâ. I grew up squarely middle class and I remember the first time someone got mad at me for assuming their parents would also pay for me. Idk I guess usually if I went to the store with my friend and my mom bought me a candy or a soda sheâd buy one for them too, or if I had to do a school project my parents (or friendsâ parents) would just buy the poster board or the paint or whatever you needed. Same thing if you went out to dinner, or a movie. Sometimes it was my parents, sometimes it was my friendsâ parents. Nothing huge obviously, but I was used to the adults just paying.
The first time I was with a friend and they were like âYou need to pay my mom back for dinnerâ I was like â??? I am a child ???â.
At 18, I realised I didnât have survival skills and had to rely on everyone else for anything. Didnât know how to cook, commute via public transport, fix something broken in the house, mow the lawn, etc.
Slowly building my life skills ever since.
First day of classes at college. Woke up late, sprinted to class, got back to my dorm and⌠realized it was just how I left it. Bed unmade, clothes all over the floor, etc. And then I realized how unaware I was of my maid cleaning up after every single thing I did every minute of every day.Â
Iâve since been humbled; family made some poor financial decisions, lost the safety net I didnât realize I relied on so much, and I have learned the value of work. But that memory still stings with shame when I think of it. .
When a friend talked about being a summer camp counselor and talked about how they would have a week at the end of the summer for scholarship kids, and it never occurred to me that summer camp (the stay overnight kind not day camp) is expensive enough to need scholarships.
Of course thinking about it now, your kid is doing guided activities all day long and is being fed three meals a day with lodging of course it’s expensive, but my parents just never really told us about how much things cost so I never realized.
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