The Feeble Weeble?

Growing up, I attended a Catholic K-8 school which, like many private schools, relied on a host of fundraisers to keep the lights on and the a/c cold. Each fall, my classmates and I were ushered into the parish hall to hear a charismatic presenter discuss how we students could sell, sell, sell our way to glory. Glory apparently meant earning a bunch of cheap crap by selling wrapping paper and canisters of popcorn to as many neighbors and family members as you could con into signing your gridded fundraising folder. Of course, as students we didn't have the ability to understand our school needed the extra support. To us, fundraisers were a means by which we could get stuff -- stuff our parents wouldn't buy for us. Our savvy salesmanship was the ticket to boomboxes, massive vats of candy, and small color televisions for our private use.

The biggest fundraiser of the year was a magazine drive. For those of you who don't remember life before the Internet, magazines were the source of information about fashion, food, and yes, news. Sure there was cable, but with an 8:30 p.m. bedtime, most of the shows I wanted to watch were out of reach. Magazines filled my informational needs. I was (and still am) all about mags. My family subscribed to a number of them, and I remember sitting in the fundraising presentation silently tallying how much I was going to rake in through sales to my parents, extended family, and neighbors. I would earn my own color TV, a Sony Walkman, and all the puppy posters I wanted without having to pander to dear old mom and dad.

I should note that I was likely about seven years old.

At the presentation, we were all given a glossy chart that explained the point totals needed for the light-up yo-yo and neon jelly bracelet prizes. However, the real way to track your status was through your Weebles. A Weeble was simply a colored cotton puff with googly eyes. It was attached to a white elastic band meant to go around your wrist. Each $20 in magazine sales equalled one Weeble. On Fridays, as you marched your envelope full of checks to the fundraising rep's corner of the cafeteria, so were you bestowed with your Weeble reward. The more you had on your arm, the more you had sold. It was a public declaration of your success, and an easy way to spark competition among students. Weeble-wearers could be called without notice to ice cream socials and dances during class time. Weeble-wearers were going to get stuff, and lots of it. Not surprisingly, the three-cent puffs became the campus status symbol du jour. 

By fundraiser's end I had an armful of Weebles, though that paled in comparison to the wealthiest members of my class -- kids whose parents owned sizable law firms and passed the envelope to hundreds if not thousands of people. I sold many magazines (without my parent passing the envelope around the workplace, thank you very much), but it never seemed like I had enough. One Friday, I watched a classmate receive a plastic grocery bag containing at least 300 of the stupid things. It didn't take long to feel inadequate and well, poor in comparison to my Weeble-laden peers. The dream of a private TV and lifetime supply of Milk Duds began to fade. At the fundraiser's conclusion, several winners paraded onto the stage and collected their Walkmans, remote-controlled Porsches, and yes, TVs. With $200 in sales, I received a cardboard bank filled with Tootsie Rolls from my homeroom teacher. There was no applause, no proud march across the stage, no TV. I threw my Weebles out that afternoon.

Of course, this sort of competition doesn't end with a handful of Weebles in a South Florida landfill. As I grew older, it morphed. It became the pool we didn't have, the cars we didn't drive, the vacations we didn't take. Though my family was solidly middle class, perhaps even upper middle class, I spent a lot of time comparing how my family "measured up" to others. And often those comparisons were unfair. Whereas those kids with the TVs and troughs of Snickers had stuff, I had both of my parents, a nice house, friends, and plenty of fine vacations. I had everything I wanted, and probably a little more than I needed.

Now, as a full-fledged adult, I find those pangs of competition and comparison welling up again. It just takes a minute to rationally talk yourself down from one-upping a friend or kicking yourself for not having x, y, and z.

As a kid, I thought adulthood meant total security. You get married, buy a house, maybe have some kids, a dog and -- boom -- suddenly, you've got it all. Forget the club, your weekends are now chockfull of trips to Home Depot for floodlights and organic compost! And you're so happy about that you could scream. Maybe it's that I notice these things more or maybe society has just changed that much in the past ten years, but it seems like a lot of people are trying really hard to outdo their peers. Somehow, in a down economy, I'm seeing brand new cars everywhere. The malls are full of people buying, buying, buying. It's difficult to go to a restaurant in my area without a reservation or at least a lengthy wait for a table.  And everyone on the planet is now toting a smartphone. All of this makes me question how much we all need this stuff in our lives? What are we all working so hard for? A bunch of crap we likely won't care about next week, much less next year?

In many ways, it feels like Weebledom has swept the land, only with higher stakes. Like it or not, most of us are never going to live the lifestyle that Beyonce does. My child will never own a 24-karat gold rocking horse or drive a Bugatti under my tutelage. And really, I'm totally happy about that. If I could have offered my parents any advice back in the day, it would have been to give me less and make me work more. Which is all the more reason I find the current obsession with having the latest and greatest -- the tablet/house/car that's better than anyone else's -- all the more puzzling.

In a stroke of serendipity, I recently saw a Weeble (or something like it). It had been years since I'd even thought about one, and yet there one was, basking in the glory of a black BMW's dashboard. My initial response was to feel my arm, to see if I was wearing one. When I caught myself doing this, it was easy to smile and move on with a happy nod and not a second glance.