My Son Will Be an Uneducated Sap

Hate to say it, J.P., but the chances of your getting an education similar to the private, prep-school one that I received are nil.

I went to a fancy Upper West Side private school, where I received advanced instruction in insider trading, pasta kneading, and the ethical justifications for moral lapses. The cost to send my son to the school that I attended runs to $28,000 per year, starting in kindergarten. Technical term for that? Highway Robbery. (See also: are you out of your fucking mind?)

Why won’t J.P. be receiving his fair share of this part of the intellectual American Dream? Well, let’s start with my career choices. My mother is a doctor and my father is a consultant for a large corporation. I work for a dying industry, and earn—I think this is the technical term for it — bupkis (from the Yiddish for “your ass is broke”; alternate spellings: bobkes, bopkes, bubkes, bupkes, bupkiss, bupkus; see: nada, poverty, disgrace).

Still unclear? Perhaps a photographic hint will help.

dadhobo

Without being too specific, 28 G’s is a fair chunk of what I make annually; and given my soon-to-be ex-wife’s stated desire to take my money, my home, and my dignity (I get to keep the dog), and drive me into the sea, I’m thinking the public schools are improving under Bloomberg (or so they would like us to believe).

Published by Theodore

Theodore Ross is an editor of Harper’s Magazine. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, Saveur, Tin House, the Mississippi Review, and (of course), the Vietnam News. He grew up in New York City by way of Gulfport, MS, and as a teen played the evil Nazi, Toht, in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. He lives with his son, J.P. in Brooklyn, and is currently working on a book about Crypto-Jews.

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