Casual Encounters with the Idle Rich

I can't abide buttered parsnips, crooked pictures, or useless society women. The first I can avoid, the second I can fix, but the third - whose only function is to marry and breed more useless society women - is a plague.

They're immediately identifiable by their valley girl speech, their gushing insincerity, their Neiman Marcus wardrobes and their need to mention their neighborhood, which car they came in, and at the very least, two references to how long they've had their nanny. They bring 20 or 30 outfits to a one look photo shoot. There's a touch of entitlement if not outright malice to their magpie chatter and a careless privilege when they “accidentally” spill out a half dozen black credit cards and tell me to choose one. They're overflowing with suggestions on how the photographer should do her job, all of which begin with, “Now of course, I'm not a professional but......” and of the thirty outfits (all with price tags prominently displayed), there's not so much as a facecloth to wipe the drool off the baby's chin. “What could my Bessie Mae have been thinking not to put in a baby wipe,” they twitter, bat their silvery shadowed eyes and give their hair a practiced, over the shoulder toss. I cringe with every word and gesture and pray that I'll be able to keep my sausage and egg biscuit down.

There is a bright spot with this particular moron mama because when she turns sideways to me, I notice her nose. Not only is it unfortunately crooked with a shocking hump in the bridge, it's ski slope long and ends in what looks like a wheel barrow caught in a snow drift. It hooks hard to the left and all her concealer and artfully applied Elizabeth Arden can't diminish it. I know I should be ashamed of the delight this gives me but then she looks down at me, peering over that amazing hump and giving me a nasty, glittery smile with her ironically perfect teeth.

“Oh,” she says with a dismissive sneer that's impossible to miss, “Was I supposed to bring my own toys too?”

Instead of counting to ten, I run through the first five local plastic surgeons I can think of and smile back through my own impeccably perfect bridgework.

“We'll make do, dear,” I tell her cheerfully and for a fraction of a second I think I see her jaw clench but then she remembers that apart from the occasional, sugary sweet reprimand, women in her position don't engage the help. She thanks me, gathers up her child and her designer accessories, slings her Prada bag over her shoulder and stalks off, Gucci heels clicking like rapid fire gunshots.

Would that money could buy class and manners the way the class-less and unmannered rich think it does.