Prince Harry’s tell-all boyhood memoir may be tragic, but not nearly as tragic as my own, for which I was paid a fifty-dollar advance against future royalties, which have yet to materialize. Harry, on the other hand, pocketed an advance of twenty million for a book he didn’t even write himself. That’s twenty million dollars that might otherwise have been distributed among actual writers like myself. Problem is, no one nowadays gives a hoot about the private lives of people who aren’t famous.
Harry’s chief complaint is that he is the younger of two brothers in a royal family where firstborn males automatically become heirs to the throne. So, being the third born of three brothers, I can relate. If family albums are any indication, my oldest brother Jim was my parents’ favorite. They took dozens of pictures of him and even entered him into a “beautiful baby” contest, in which he won honorable mention. Such contests are basically scams perpetrated upon gullible parents. I know, because I’ve never won one. In fact, I was never entered.
Having already spawned two boys, Mom and Dad were clearly hoping for a girl and hadn’t even considered the possibility that I wouldn’t be one. My baby book, for instance, is pink, and the pages are blank. According to my birth certificate, my name is simply “baby boy.” A proper name wouldn’t come until later, after the shock and disappointment had subsided.
Harry complains of numerous hardships he endured while growing up. For example, his apartment at Kensington Palace had insufficient lighting, while at Balmoral he is confined to “a mini room in a narrow back corridor, among the offices of Palace staff.”
I feel his pain! Mine was a dimly-lit shared basement bedroom with no en suite, unless an open floor drain counts as a urinal. Upstairs was a single commode shared by a family of six, and by “shared” I mean hogged by an older brother who considered himself heir to the “throne.”
About that ill-considered Nazi uniform he once wore to a fancy-dress party, Harry blames it on William and Kate, who supposedly thought it was funny. About the Boy Scout uniform I proudly wore to summer camp, only later have I come to realize that the Boy Scouts are basically Brown Shirts.
Harry admits to having racked up 25 kills while serving in the British armed forces in Afghanistan. I confess to having successfully dodged the Vietnam draft and having saved one life while serving stateside as a non-commissioned lifeguard. The local newspaper got my name wrong. So, we two have nothing in common there.
Harry lashes out at the British press, in particular the paparazzi who have dogged him all his life. Again, I can feel his pain, but I suppose it all boils down to the tabloid press putting a price on his head. Commoners like myself are never mobbed by cameramen whenever we step outside. More likely, we are totally ignored. I distinctly remember having waited and waited and waited for someone to take my order at a local Frostee Freeze. Finally, one of the teen-aged girls lolling behind the counter asked the other if she had waited on “that man.”
Her response: “What man?”