*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a former coworker, who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.
I worked with a woman who drove a Cadillac. She was forty years old, and she was married with two children. Her children were in their early twenties and about to graduate from a very expensive college.
One day, my coworker told me the story of her Cadillac, a car purchase that was twenty years in the making.
She and her husband were married young. They had decent jobs and bought a house together with a mortgage that took the majority of their take-home pay to keep current. They had enough money to live a good life, but not enough extra to put away for their future.
They didn't mind not being able to save for the future. As I said, they were still young. There was plenty of time for that. They just wanted to be able to enjoy life in the present, and so they did.
In the spirit of living for the present and not the future, my coworker's husband bought a Cadillac. He had "always" wanted one. I put always in quotation marks because as I said already, more than once, they were still young.
Here's the thing. My coworker's husband didn't tell her he was buying a Cadillac. He wanted to surprise her with it, and he succeeded. What he didn't realize was they were both in for a surprise that day.
When he showed up at their doorstep driving his shiny new Cadillac, his wife had a surprise of her own.
He told her he'd just signed the loan for their new surprise Caddy, and she told him she was pregnant. Without saying a word, he drove away and returned the car to the dealership.
It would be nearly two decades before he would return to the Cadillac dealership to buy another new Caddy. By then, they would have two children, twenty years of marriage, several promotions, and a nearly paid mortgage under their belts.
By the time I met my coworker, she and her husband were financially stable. They had paid for four years of college for each of their two children. They were comfortably settled in their home. They finally had enough money to focus on luxuries, not just necessities.
And so, after much discussion this time, they both bought brand new Cadillacs. Yes, this time, they each got one. And it may not have been a surprise, but I'm sure the purchase was much sweeter--especially for the car salesman who sold not one but two brand-new Cadillacs in one fell swoop. He was the true victor in this story.
Then again, my coworker really did love her Caddy.
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