Greenwich Roundup: 08/04/08 Pathetic bluebloods - Jane finally threw in the towel on being accepted among the bluebloods of Greenwich

Monday, August 4, 2008

08/04/08 Pathetic bluebloods - Jane finally threw in the towel on being accepted among the bluebloods of Greenwich

By Jane Genova
Executive and Marketing Communications Pro

Not everyone winds up like Charles Ryder who wants the world of aristocratic Brideshead too much. To most of my striving working-class and middle-class classmates in college and graduate school, that small corner of the universe was too foreign to bother with. Confident about their prospects in their own worlds, they focused solely on making a professional and social life there. Then there was me. What is it about the Ryders and my type who have the curious hunger for where the grass is very different but not necessarily greener? Lack of self-confidence? Diffuse self-hate? Arrested development?

Over the past eight years I have been asking myself that. It was just before the century turned that I finally threw in the towel on being accepted among the bluebloods of Greenwich, Connecticut. For 17 years I had been doing whatever I assumed would work to make me one of those. Of course, I saw the dysfunction in some of their lives. So? My childhood wasn't a pretty sight either.

Slowly I got it, like Ryder might have as he aged, that old money is like a tribe - if you're not born in, you're not in. Once I saw the impossibility of my dream and let go of it, I became downright puzzled what I thought I wanted from the bluebloods.

Surely not their money. I had my own, at least then. And they are tight-fisted with theirs.

Not their culture. I LOVE pop culture. They, true Crusties, don't.

Not their education. I attended Harvard Law School long enough to be repulsed by its values.

Not their exotic vacations. A hard-working girl I wouldn't know what to do with myself on the second day away from my multi-tasking.

Did I learn this lesson too late? No. It came just in time to exploit my blue-collar survival skills to make it through this global downturn. The Crusties who do have offices in Greenwich, Manhattan, and Boston are dropping like flies. We born-to-hustle kind are getting too much business. We might be the only shops around that are hiring..