16 people who grew up 'filthy rich' share their most embarrassing reality slap.
Checking your privilege can be awkward when you didn't know that most people have to share a plane (and even a row of seats) with complete strangers whenever they travel...
There are families who don't have private chefs? Some people don't have private movie theaters in their houses? So, when a Reddit user asked people who grew up 'filthy rich,' 'what did you think was normal until your learned otherwise?' people who spent their childhood in the 1% were ready to share their funniest reality slap.
1.
I thought everyone got to eat dinner quite often with the president. I always thought the president has dinner at random houses until I learned otherwise when I finally joined regular school (I was homeschooled until I was age 9) and no kid believed my 'dinner story '- grammarglamor
2.
I feel bad having said this while joining a friend on a road trip up into the mountains at his brother's house. There was slow-as-balls internet at the house we were going to and the connection dropped frequently.
I didn't have my car with me since I was on a road trip with someone else at the time. This was also before personal wifi was a thing, and my cell phone at the time was a state-of-the-art brick phone from Nokia (thus no hotspot):
Me: 'If there's any way I could borrow a car to hop into town for Internet tomorrow that would be awesome.
Friend: 'Well, my brother uses his car every day and I'm using mine to go to that event we talked about.'
Me: 'That's fine. Is it okay if I just use his extra car?'
Awkward silence, until...
Friend: 'He just has that one car.' - Draekhost
3.
Growing up I thought apartment buildings were only for college students. I didn't know families lived in them. - Johnnie_Karate
4.
This girl I knew was rejected from a law school because her diversity statement was written about her struggle of riding commercial to Europe for the first time. - Whitemike_23
5.
Being dropped off at school in a 67 Porsche speedster - [deleted]
6.
I never realized that other kids didn't get to travel as much as we did. By the time I graduated high school I had been to 10 countries and countless states. Now as an adult working 2 jobs to keep my head above water, I'm grateful for how lucky I really was. - JiveBomber
7.
I was 23 the first time I had to figure out how to use a washing machine. To this day I can remember how helpless I felt, staring at it like a dead fish. Had to call the family maid. Also, did not know what an onion actually looked liked until my mid twenties. Not last but not least either, I was clueless to the fact that you could have a meal with less than 9 pieces of cutlery. - bontem
8.
Discovering that other people's parents didn't have 100+ properties in their investment portfolio. We had quite a frugal lifestyle, so I just assumed that most middle class had a few investment properties and that's where all the money went. - 1234254
9.
When my stepdad started college, he went out to dinner with his friends. When they got their bill and were getting ready to leave, he was really confused. He had never had a one course meal. He was under the impression the next 3 would be coming any moment. - WhosThatGirl_ItsRPSG
10.
My mom never worked, instead she stayed at home and raised each one of her four sons in succession. So there was a point when I was shocked to learn that other kid's moms had jobs and didnt just play them / watch them / take them on excursions every day. - lycanthrope6950
11.
I thought until the start of high school that a $100 bottle of wine was cheap. Expensive ones ares several thousands after all. At the end of the year we decided to offer our retiring teacher a bottle of wine and he said: 'Don't buy a $100 bottle.' I made a joke about how picky he was and made a fool of myself. - Mishici
12.
I spent my late teens and early twenties butlering for a very very wealthy (not billionaires but not far off) family. They had 2 school age kids that I would drop off in the morning. The older (7 maybe 8 t the time) of the two was amazed to learn that I didn't have a holiday home to go to when I took time off. - boatsnbros
13.
My parents paid in full for my $60,000/yr college tuition. I was always grateful for that, but it wasn't until the postgrad reality of my friends working to pay off their student loan debt while I was able to directly pursue my professional goals that I truly realized the advantage that I had from my parents' wealth.
I had always known we were well off, but it wasn't until after college that I truly appreciated that, I guess. I hope I can pay them back for that someday. - RAVENous410
14.
Kidnapping. Whenever we travelled there were guards, I was trained in what to do if it happened, we had insurance policies against it. When I dated a middle class suburbanite and talked about it she thought I was paranoid, but that was a thing. - happybadger
15.
Probably a weird example but, growing up all of our dishes were made of fine china, Waterford glassware etc. And I just thought that's what plates and stuff were made of because we didn't have anything else. Then one time I went to a friends house for dinner and we ate on colored plastic plates and non-matching plastic cups, I just thought that was the weirdest thing ever and asked why we were eating with 'camping dishes.' - halycon8
16.
Honestly, it was the little things. I knew we had nicer cars than average, a bigger house, went on more trips, etc. But I thought everyone's refrigerators had wood-paneled cabinet doors, for example. (We had a Sub-Zero built-in refrigerator and freezer.)
The first time I saw a metal fridge I thought it was weird, and I thought it was even weirder that the fridge and freezer were combined. But then I got really jealous because you could put magnets on it.
I also thought everyone had a 'central vacuum' system where you can sweep dirt into a little hole under the cabinets by the floor and it sucks it up. We had these little holes all over, in every room. Stuff like that. - Thighmaster220