TWITTER CONCOCTIONS (S01, E02) : Daddy's Money

By my reckoning, Robert Ludlum is the ultimate marmitey American author. Baba would break every rule of punctuation in a twisted, unending statement - - and if you're not down for such prose, you will hate his writings. Me I'm a big fan of his characters and their occasional pithy one-liners. In Bourne Identity, one of those characters told Jason to "rest before you're tired". I did not, and all last week was a swirling cloud of unwellness for me. After convalescence, I have since finished the bastard second episode that was forcibly put on hold. Here we go. (You can read the first HERE)

This week’s topic, which should’ve been last week’s topic, is a timeless, (un)popular opinion brought to fore, once again, by a series of unconnected tweets which boils down to:

“YOU ARE NOT RICH. IT’S YOUR FATHER’S MONEY”

You know its not my style to jump inside a barrel labeled conclusion, so y'all will bear with me as I tell stories. Again.

Okay. When I start a sentence with “I grew up poor,” most people will assume “but we thank God we’re now rich” will follow. Most people are mad. See ba. I grew up poor and these days, I’m still financially broke most of the time. Have I ever wondered ‘why me Lord!’. Only sometimes. Koda I didn’t write that to solicit pity; I'm just saying that I write from the vantage point of a whirlwind hustler who works towards joining the big leagues AND has firsthand, non-Hollywood experience of lack. When you struggle oh-so badly to breakaway from the clutches of unyielding need, and your struggles have SEEMINGLY been in vain, the faint-hearted (through incessant frustration) resign themselves to their harsh fate.

N.B: ‘daddy’ in this piece could hence take the meaning of parents

FACT: Many persons hold the opinion that your daddy’s, and by extention, your parent’s money isn’t yours. Per se.

AFTER THE FACT:

I.  Your daddy’s money, is, in fact, in your daddy’s name and semantically, of course, IS your daddy’s money & not your money. So when someone says #You’reNotRichItsYourFather’sMoney, they are semantically, grammatically, basically, administratively and pedantically correct.

II.  Philosophically, #You’reNotRichItsYourFather’sMoney brigade is backed by the notion that:

• The money might have been used as collateral and stuff
• If the daddy dies, the money might have unforeseen beneficiaries
• The daddy might have many more hidden, biological offspring y’all didn’t know know about which reduces your quota (men are scum)
• Morally, you'll kinda be seen as a better person if you make your own money.

MY VERDICT: 

I love topics in the grey areas of life; they constitute the bulk of our beer-parlor arguments and give us things to do with our lives. Just like those pesky Nigerian films where conflicting parties wait for a rich parent to die so they can inherit and flex for the rest of time, the real time version is rather less ghastly but no less dramatic. Seeing it through the Nigerian-film prism would be simplistic, I think.

Twitter is not that deep, and some twitterati say that rich kids should BeHumble/sit down as they’re flexing with daddy’s money and not necessarily their own. I think people with this perspective are missing a vital point. If somebody’s daddy’s money affords that person some privileges, opportunities, connections, cars and relative comfort, ALL that comes with the territory. I think the bane of the issue twitterati have with dem #daddymoney gang is that some of them are spoilt, dim and obtuse. But judging a demographic by a select few many is an –ism. Most –isms are bad. And I think these lot owe the world no explanations or apologies whatsoever.

Come on! I hate to say my aunt would be my uncle if she had a penis but if your folks were rich, you'd be a rich kid too. Rich-Kid isn’t an euphemism for stupid. So what if some of them spend half-a-mil every other night at the club. She’s a bastard. Face your front.

There is the morality angle too as seen in J.F Odunjo’s poem “Ise loogun Ise”, he opines repeatedly that work is the antidote to poverty and counsels that even if your folks are rich, you still shouldn’t rely on them. These are admirable sentiments, but being a rich kid affords one to plan rationally WITHOUT distractions. Give the average poor guy a N2million loan to start a business and while planning his business (like a rich kid spending his family’s N2million would), a portion of his productivity will be permanently assigned to thinking about turning a profit early and servicing his loan. Conversely, the rich kid will be able to focus all his thinking on the business without REALLY stressing over profits and loan repayments.

A quick word here too. I know more than most that it is especially hard for a poor person to rise in this world, but that is something you must deal with gaskiya. Romanticizing and glorifying your current position as a poor person is the worst kind of poverty. See ba. You hold no moral or any other advantage over them just because you don’t have a rich daddy. Talking of morals, some twitterati seem to be simmering just below the visible surface because they are of the opinion that most rich people accumulate their wealth by looting public funds or other unscrupulous means.

Well…

In conclusion, the intangible things having a rich daddy affords the kid, apart from the money itself, are invaluable. And this, is why, I submit that #You’reNotRichItsYourFather’sMoney gang are in the wrong here, and they’ve been assigned the L  on this episode.

May our kids be born with silver spoons and all manner of assorted cutlery.

---@Captaincue