You Ain’t Rich Until You’re Boca Raton Rich

“Excuse me sir, those umbrellas are only available for daily rentals”.

I had just walked to a standing pile of huge umbrellas meant to be used as shade from the Florida sun which, if you didn’t know, stands a mere 100 feet above your scalp as opposed to anywhere else on this Earth.  This comment made me stop, mid-stride, en route to my previously acquired position on the beach.

“Oh… I’m sorry how much are they?” I said to the young man who addressed me among four other bronzed cabana boys.

“Twenty dollars a day,” replied the beach slave who our hotel hired to add to their massive amount of subservient worker bees.

“Uh… okay.  Forget it.” I said, realizing I’d just tagged myself as not being a trust fund baby, dot-com millionaire, young entrepreneur or simply some lucky bastard whose parents just happened to have a gazillion dollars.  You see… twenty dollar bills are what the ridiculously affluent use to wipe their butt or pick up that dead bug they just smashed with their shoe.

I could almost hear them snickering and commenting to each other as I slinked away sans umbrella, “Ha.  Poor dude can’t even shell out for a twenty-dollar umbrella rental!  He must be one of those middle class citizens!  QUICK!! TAKE A PICTURE!!”

What they didn’t know is that I had just spent $15.85 (along with my $5 Red Bull and $7 blueberry muffin) on a small vial of spray on sun-block earlier at the pool.  I didn’t need their stupid umbrella.

Nice ocean shot… and, uh… nice shot of your bag with the blueberry muffin in it dork

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Bunny approached me several months ago with an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up.  Ever since DLG had been born we’d never spent a night away from her together in over two years.  Now, her work gave her the chance to go on a trip to a woman’s conference in Boca Raton, Florida.  Our plan was that she would attend the first several days of the conference and I would simply fly up and meet her as the conference was finishing spending several extra days on the beach soaking in some extra rays of vitamin D.  It was a no-brainer.

After navigating through my steadily increasing pangs of guilt for leaving my little one at home and going off to have fun without her as well as finding suitable care for her while we were gone… I took off early in the morning last Friday to meet my wife on the sunny beaches of Boca Raton, Florida.

I didn’t like leaving DLG, but I knew that Bunny and I needed our time together and for nothing else than to recharge our batteries.  It is strange how much life changes in two short years.  At one time, we were able to do what we wanted when we wanted to do it… and now the thought of myself quietly reading a book (Me?  Read something!!) or sleeping until 10AM was extremely appealing to me.

I picked a book of the discount rack for this trip and the book happened to be “Marley And Me”.  This book was recently made into a movie with Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson.  I saw it some time ago and I must say… if you don’t cry at the end of the movie than you have no soul.  You’ll cry more than you did in any of the Twilight movies… er, I mean… at the end of Rudy. 

I began reading “Marley And Me” on the first of two plane rides I had to take to get to Bunny.

About halfway through the book and halfway through the second plane ride, author John Grogan writes about his families move to BOCA RATON, FLORIDA!!  What are the chances!!  His description that followed I must say… made me a tad uneasy:

Boca Raton was a wealthy Republican bastion largely populated with recent arrivals from New Jersey and New York.  Most of the money in town was new money, and most of those who had it didn’t know how to enjoy it without making fools of themselves.  Boca Raton was a land of luxury sedans, red sports cars, pink stucco mansions crammed onto postage-stamp lots, and balkanized walled developments with guards at the gates.  The men favored linen pants and Italian loafers sans socks and spent inordinate amounts of time making important-sounding cell-phone calls to one another.  The woman were tanned to the consistency of the Gucci leather bags they favored, their burnished skin was set off by hair dyed alarming shades of silver and platinum.

For Boca’s well-preserved women, breast implants were a virtual requirement of residency.  The younger women all had magnificent boob jobs; the older women all had magnificent boob jobs AND face-lifts.  Butt sculpting, nose jobs, tummy tucks, and tattooed mascara rounded out the cosmetic lineup, giving the city’s female population the odd appearance of being foot soldiers in an army of anatomically correct inflatable dolls.

I can’t say I was too dissapointed about the possibility of “magnifient” boob jobs around every corner… but the other stuff sounding a little extreme and probably was the authors way of making the situation a little more “colorful”.

I was wrong and I quickly came to find out we were pathetically out-of-place.

The red Kia Sephia that Bunny had been given by Enterprise Rent-A-Car didn’t quite fit in with the other Bentleys, Corvettes, Lamborghinis, ROLLS ROYCES and any number of European models you don’t see cruising down I-40 in the middle of Oklahoma too often.

A Bentley we saw AT THE MOVIE THEATER!!!

Face lifts, boobs jobs, tummy tucks and any reconstructive surgery you could think of almost seemed to be a prerequisite to staying at the hotel.  I saw a woman without a belly button.  I saw a woman with her lips stretched apart to the point where it seemed the upper part of her head just might blow off her lower jaw.  I saw my first thong on the beach… and it wasn’t what I had hoped.

Contrary to every Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue ever published… swimsuit models ARE NOT the only ones who ONLY wear thong swimsuits!  Old grandma’s wear them too.

I saw yachts (or mini-cruise ships) with boats I would barely be able to afford ON TOP of them.  A simple flip of a switch within the behemoth twice the size of my house would lower the puddle-jumper by means of an elaborate hydraulic crane into the ocean if you felt the need.

*not actual size, multiply by one million*

Perched like a parrot on his pirate master’s shoulder, this boat the size of my car waits on bated breath for his chance to dip his motor in the ocean

My tattoos stuck out as though I were that fat, creepy, greasy guy that smacks his popcorn too loud amongst all the drooling tweens at Twilight: Eclipse.  Aside from the occasional calf tattoo… I felt like Travis from Blink 182.

Don’t worry mom… it’ll never get this bad…

It was becoming rapidly apparent that John Grogan wasn’t exaggerating and we just might have, quite innocently, stumbled into a hotel and resort only frequented by the SUPER RICH in a town that itself was rich as SHIT!!.  This was, after all, the hotel that the woman’s conference was being held so where else would Bunny have stayed?

Despite our feelings of insecurity every moment we pulled our Kia up to the valet (at which point I would jokingly tell the valet to “take care of my baby”) or felt that we received stares better suited for circus clowns or bears riding unicycles… we had a great time.

If anything, Boca Raton just proved to us that we could never be the rich, stuffy type.  Well… okay, wait… I guess I could say: “the SUPER rich, stuffy type”!  Who wouldn’t want to be rich!!  Who wouldn’t want to spend eternity on a beach taking pictures like this:

SCHWING!!!

Eating desserts like this:

CA-CHING!!!

Or getting your ass burnt to hell like this:

Notice the tan lines.  Remember this post?  Oh yeah baby… I’m gonna have me some fun in a couple of days!!!

Yeah… I wanna be rich.  Just not Boca Raton rich.

Or Boca Raton bitchy.

Or Boca Raton sunburnt.  Ouch.