Just a Spoonful of Jelly

It's funny, sometimes, how we gauge our wealth. For some of us, it's the difference between driving a Lexus and a Pontiac. Or the ornateness of our bathroom faucets, or whether we jet off to the Alps or pack up the van for a road trip to the Appalachians. Or, worse still, go nowhere.

Recently, a friend described what it was like to grow up poor. For him, it was all about the jelly. For years, when he wanted jelly on his toast, he did it just as his parents had taught him. He would dip a knife into the jelly jar, and spread whatever modest amount of deep purple goo he dug out into a thin, virtually transparent film of the palest violet on top of the bread.

Years later, when he was already well into young adulthood, he was amazed to see a spoon in the jelly jar at the home of a wealthy friend. He watched in awe as each person at the table took a turn with the spoon, excavating overflowing dollops of the viscous delicacy and slopping it on as if it were something you could come by easily. Like everyone else, he used the spoon, trying -- without much success -- to spread the jelly into the practically invisible film to which he had become accustomed. Not wanting to be rude, he prepared to choke it down. Sometimes, less is more. That day, he discovered, more can be more, and sometimes you just cannot have too much of a good thing. It was the best toast he had ever tasted.

Old habits die hard though, and when he is at home, alone, he still uses a knife for his jelly, and still limits himself as if the stuff were pure gold. He still thinks of himself as poor, or certainly less privileged than a lot of the people who surround him. In his circle, nobody thinks twice about grabbing a spoonful of anything, or, worse still, letting their kids stack the precious (and, oddly, free) rectangular packets of jelly on a restaurant table and then leave the unopened containers on dirty dishes, destined for disposal.

As far as I could tell, when my friend discovered how the rich treat their jelly, he was oblivious to what must have been expensive silver flatware and imported china, the crystal juice goblets, the elegant tapestries half covering the lovingly maintained wooden floors. Or, if he noticed these things, he did not say. Surrounded by all the trappings of wealth, he felt cheated only because of an outrageously conspicuous consumption of, of all things, jelly.

My friend told me this story as we sat outside, on a cool June evening, eating ice cream. We were at one of what would be many Chicago summer street fairs, enjoying the music of local bands, inhaling the incomparable aroma of ethnic foods being grilled to order behind makeshift counters, still nursing our cheap drinks, enjoying the parading mosaic of people

. Something made us laugh, uncontrollably. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was, but I remember thinking, as I sat eating ice cream with a friend on a gritty street in the city, that life should always be like this.

If wealth is to be measured by the preciousness of the flatware or the ornateness of the fixtures or the distance travelled, I should have felt as poor as a kid who knows nothing other than a thin film of jelly. But on that perfect early summer evening, the richness was laid on pretty thick.