Róisín Ingle
. . . . on first world problems
THE FOLLOWING IS not a tale of woe. I need to point that out because these days it doesn’t do to be seen to be complaining about anything. Stubbed your toe painfully during yoga? Poured sour milk on your organic breakfast cereal? Realised you left your passport at home just as you reach the check-in desk? These are prime examples of first-world problems. “I hate it when I ask for no tomato in the deli and they still give me tomato,” that kind of thing.
The point is we should count ourselves lucky to have such “problems”.
Think of the poor people of (insert blighted region of the world here).
There is even a video on the internet of Haitian people with actual problems reading out a bunch of first-world problems to better hammer home the point that our “problems” are a joke compared to theirs.
“I hate it when I leave the charger downstairs,” is one. “I hate it when my house is so big I need two wireless routers,” is another. So this is not a tale of woe. All that happened is I lost some stuff that was sort of integral to the smooth running of my life. It’s no natural disaster or famine. I lost some stuff and I’m a bit down about it but hey, ho nobody died and life goes on.
We have a sign on the door that prompts “Keys? Wallet? Phone?” For the last week when I’ve seen it, I’ll check my pockets and then remember I don’t have any keys, wallet or phone anymore. Not to mention my digital recorder, favourite silver earrings and my make-up bag. “I hate when I have to use Vaseline instead of lip gloss,” a first-world problem extraordinaire.
I lost the phone while out drinking in a nightclub. A high-class problem if I ever had one. Losing it that way was an improvement on having it grabbed out of my hand which is how I found myself phoneless the last two times. The guards told me it’s madness to walk and talk with an iPhone in Dublin. I still do it though. I just hold the phone tighter and keep a vigilant eye out for people coming behind me on bikes.
The rest of my life was in the brown leather satchel my mother gave me for my birthday last year. I loved that bag. It looked like a schoolbag but still managed to make me feel grown up. She gave me another bag for my birthday this year. A black one decorated with diamante skulls, a bag for going out, a fancy pirate bag. I felt that day looking at the schoolbag and the sparkly one, admiring the contrast between them, that I’d never need another bag in my life. Now I have one bag again. I bring it to work and only display the side with plain black leather and hide the side with the work-inappropriate sparkly skulls.
