7 Mar 2010
Being born on 3rd base
My friend Robert has a saying: “Some people are born on 3rd base and think they hit a triple.”
The saying applies to people who might not recognize the opportunities they had growing up. Sure, someone might have slaved away to get a 4.0 at an Ivy league school, but, if their parents paid for it, the circumstances they faced growing up still nurtured them at least partly into that environment.
I was, in fact, born on 3rd base. My parents, who did not grow up well-off, immigrated to the US & worked very, very hard to provide a comfortable, almost lavish, upper-middle-class lifestyle for my sister & me. They paid for college and bought me a nice car when I finished grad school; although, out of some now-laughable rebellion-without-a-cause, I paid for grad school by taking out loans, just to make a point. Perhaps most importantly, though, they set a high bar for what I should expect out myself
The point isn’t whether you were born on 3rd base or not; it’s whether you steal home once you’re there :-)
