Kennedy: Wealth is in the eye of beholder

I saw Ben Stein on television the other day talking about America’s spoiled corporate leaders.

Mr. Stein has had a variety of jobs — actor, lawyer, pundit. You might remember him from his role as a teacher in the film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” (Anyone? Anyone?) He also wrote speeches for two presidents, Nixon and Ford.

Anyway, Mr. Stein was saying on television that some of America’s top CEOs think they’re entitled to opulent lifestyles. He said some of them can’t fathom living on just “a few million dollars a year.”

Really?

It has been widely reported that Wall Street firms handed out $18 billion in bonuses late last year while the U.S. economy crumbled. That amount of money pays for a lot of over-the-top lifestyles.

I was thinking about this the other day when I sat down to talk to a woman in the Times Free Press lobby. I’d like to skip her name because she seemed a little bewildered by life, but she was here to show us some colorful prints she had bought at a yard sale.

I asked her to stop by again the next day when I had more time to talk, and she arrived promptly at 4 p.m. She explained that she is a 59-year-old widow with no steady income. Some of the little money she has, she said, is spent on tag-sale trinkets that make her happy — colored glass, old books, jewelry boxes.

One by one, she pulled items from her oversized bag.

There was the silk purse with the initials M.M. embroidered inside that she imagined might have belonged to Marilyn Monroe.

There was a hand-painted tin square that reminded her of the Picasso quote: “It took me a lifetime to paint like a child.”

There were religious tracts painted on rice paper intended to convert Chinese people to Christianity.

There was a proof edition of an obscure novel that she assured me was “spellbinding.”

“I have to buy stuff real cheap,” she said. “I buy a lot of stuff for a dime.

“It’s my entertainment,” she said. “I can spend 75 cents and have something nice. Other people might spend 75 cents and buy a McDonald’s hamburger. But then they eat it, and then they have nothing left.”

The death of the new “gilded age” is sometimes painful to watch. Super-rich Americans have eaten their hamburgers, so to speak, and have nothing left but the wrapper.

Talking to the lady in the lobby helped me remember that an imagination is a priceless gift. In the days ahead, I hope to focus more on simple pleasures and 10-cent treasures.