SILVER SPOON–PLUS

 
I was born with a silver spoon. An employee fine-tuned “silver spoon” to “Stratton, you were born with a silver spoon up your ass.”

I wasn’t made for real estate, like my old man. I didn’t grow up the hard way. South Euclid was no slum. I got a journalism job after college in the Collinwood neighborhood. I wrote for the the Sun Scoop Journal. Look it up. The paper doesn’t exist anymore. I dealt with all kinds of working-stiff Slovenians, Lithuanians, Italians, and blacks in northeast Cleveland.

Then I bought a house nearby, right by Lake Erie. Northeast Cleveland was cool, I learned on the job. Then I bought more houses there — with my old man’s money.

I got up to a four houses, sold them, and bought an apartment building. Scaling up is the real estate term. My old man co-signed on the mortgages. My old man — not too subtly —  pushed me into real estate. So I quit the newspaper.

And I became my old man, and my old man was very happy about that. Throughout the rest of his life, he never failed to remind there was zero money in journalism. A numbers guy — my dad. He thought about money nonstop and kept records on everything.

I don’t like numbers, and I don’t keep records. The only thing I collect is receipts from the wastebaskets outside Home Depot. And every spring I take my shopping bag full of  receipts to my accountant. I’ve never balanced my checkbook. If the bank screws me, I don’t know. Fine with me.

So here I am, in 2026, still annoyed by that building manager saying, in 1984, I had a silver spoon up my ass.  He could have simply said “silver spoon.” I wouldn’t have remembered that.

Silver spoon–plus  has staying power. Maybe it’s true.

(This is autobiographical fiction.)