Cottage People

They congregate in areas around small lakes in the woods, putting up wooden structures with beams and wiring exposed inside. Some get around to finishing them off, but not for quite a few years, because they move right in as soon as the old furniture gets stuffed inside the rooms, and the beams no longer matter.

Ordinary cottage adults have parties on Saturday nights - a bonfire, a picnic table, sand, a tin barrel of drinks on the ground and hot dog sticks leaning against a pine tree.

Cottage teenagers hang out all summer, swimming and drinking when the adults aren't watching, sulking to each other and gossiping about each other and being special.

Guests are outsiders. They never fit in. And they never come back.

Cottage children run wild in the sand, eating popsicles that drip sticky colors down their bare brown chests and chasing squirrels and screaming just for the heck of it.

Cottage floors need sweeping ten times a day.

Meals are served on mismatched plates and cold metal cups hold cold drinks, and coffee mugs are ugly, and the coffee table magazines are zillions of years old.

The monied cottage people have palaces compared to the ordinary cottage people. Their dishes are china new, their linens are linen, and the furniture is showroom perfect.

On Saturday nights, they have adult parties with catered food, and the children never eat popsicles or wear bare chests or chase squirrels, because there aren't any in these manicured settings.

The teenagers complain and swim in pools and play tennis and sulk and gossip and sneak liquor out of cherrywood cabinets if they want to.

But they're all cottage people, and when they're at the cottages, they're different people than when you see them at home, because up there they hang out with people who have more money than the people back home.