for the kids who get everything

For all of you who get things handed to you,

You wouldn't know. Because your successes are failures.  Your blessings are your burdens.  You have clean hair and drive a car you've never dropped a dime on.  The only job you've had is humanitarian. And I know you meant well, but you didn't.

Your price tags and trendy-but-not-trendy shoes.  Your hollow, tiny shelf of advice from living under the same roof for too many years with too few people.  You don't know the people outside of your shelf.  But, oh, they know you.

All you have is the books people handed you, the essays your mother "proofread" and the grades that you blankly took because of it.  While we searched for a place to put ourselves, carving our initials into our makeshift podiums with our bare hands and bloody nails. And you stepped onto the one they gave to you.

I know people who were given one, too. And they stepped off of it. And knelt down beside us, digging their hands into our woodwork to help us finish.  And then they watched us on our podiums, and clapped for us before stepping back onto theirs.

But you, you pretended not to see us.

And we worked harder than you. And we're still below you and your silken robes and crested sash. But we're better than you simply for the notion that you stand alone. And we stand together, bonded by the path we carved with our own two hands.

So I'm sorry. I hope you find your way off your shelf. It's getting too small for you anyway.