The American Dream, Supersized

By Bruce Handy/Glynis Sweeny

[This article consists of an illustration. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] True story: As part of its social-studies curriculum, my daughter's fourth-grade class was planning a field trip to the Lower East Side in Manhattan to get a sense of what life was like for immigrants in the early 20th century.

This was particularly meaningful for our family since my wife's grandparents had lived on the Lower East Side. Her father's mother had a compelling story, having come from a small village in Latvia where the family shared a single pair of shoes. In New York City, she sold vegetables from a pushcart and eventually opened a successful dress shop in New Jersey.

As beneficiaries of all that hope and energy unleashed upon the New World, you certainly feel an obligation to honor it. So, field trip--great idea! But that night we got a surprise ...

[What did you think was the most interesting part of the trip?]

[Watching The Simpsons in the limo.]

Huh? It turned out that the school bus had broken down. Happily, the trip was salvaged when a generous and fast-thinking mother called a car service. So, yes: where huddled masses had once arrived in cramped, fetid steamships, my daughter and her classmates were now rolling up in limos with TVs.

[See these apartment buildings, children? They're called tenements. Does anyone know how many families could fit into a single--]

[Julius! Leave the minibar ALONE!]

There was an obvious disconnect here. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered: Hadn't most immigrants come to America to make a better life for themselves and their descendants? Who's to say that by better they didn't mean ridiculously so? Maybe the American Dream has always been supersized ...

[This is my vow: that my children's children will someday watch moving pictures in the back of vast horseless carriages that also have iceboxes.]

[God willing, my children will go to medical school and then become rich by injecting women's faces with poison to make them look younger.]

[Would that my great-grandson grows up to become a professional poker player.]

[Mi hijo tambien.*]

*"My kid too." **"Damn. I thought the streets would be paved with iPods."