We vacationed on historic Wampum Island. Everybody felt superior.
The people who live year-round on the island felt superior to the summer visitors. The people who were born on the island felt superior to the people who were not born on the island, even though they lived year-round on the island.
The summer people who owned houses felt superior to the summer people who rented houses, and the summer people who rented for the entire season felt superior to the people who rented only for the month.
The people who rented for the month felt superior to the people who rented for two weeks. The people who rented for two weeks felt superior to the people who rented space in rooming houses.
Everybody felt superior to the people who came by boat in the morning and left by boat in the afternoon. These people were called “the day trippers.” The day trippers felt superior to the people who had to stay back in the city.
All day they would throng the streets of Wampumburg, the island’s only town, blockading traffic and feeling superior about being there, and everyone else would come out of doors and drive into Wampumburg to feel so superior to the day trippers that they forgot how inferior they were to so many other persons on the island.
Even within the well-defined class groupings there were subtle variations in superiority feelings. Among people who lived year-round on Wampum, for example, those who could move out of Wampumburg for the summer and take a cottage in Squatting Wampum, a small village over the horizon, felt superior to those who stayed in Wampumburg all summer.
Among summer people who owned houses, people who owned houses on the water felt superior to people who owned houses off the water.
People who had private beaches felt superior to people who had to go to public beaches.
Some people arrived on immense sailboats and tied up in the marina. They felt superior to the people who arrived on immense powerboats and tied up alongside them. People in immense powerboats felt superior to people in small sailboats while people in small sailboats felt superior to people in small powerboats.
People who had confirmed ferry reservations for their cars felt superior to people who did not. People who had confirmed seats on the airline felt superior to people who had confirmed car reservations on the ferry.
People who had private planes felt superior to people who had to use the airline, and people who had private jet planes felt superior to people who had private propeller planes.
The eating competition was intense. Those who could afford to dine at the Wampum Plenty Swordfish House felt superior to those who had to eat at the Surf ’n’ Turf Beach Shack. In the home-kitchen division, people who had found fresh corn and tomatoes felt superior to those who had had to settle for canned peas and frozen asparagus.
People who had tans felt superior to people who had sunburns, and people with sunburns felt superior to people with sallow skin. Men in this year’s madras felt superior to men in last year’s blazer. Women with expensive backhands felt superior to women with ludicrous lobs.
One could go on, but it would only make life on Wampum seem unpleasant, which it was not. In fact, it was socially sound. One night, for example, the Wampum Electric Company experienced a power failure which blacked out much of the island for most of the night, and there was no looting.
Everyone was having too good a time feeling superior to yield to the lust for such base pleasures as trashing the Wampumburg Oilskin Shoppe. In a society where everyone has somebody to feel superior to, the citizenry has too much stake in the status quo to risk destroying it on a casual rampage.