Pete Ballmer, Abanti Chowdhury/BI
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 29-year-old Pete Ballmer, a standup comedian living in San Francisco and one of the sons of billionaire and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Up until I was in late elementary school, my understanding was that my family was rich, but I didn't know that we were globally and historically rich.
I knew that my dad was a big guy at Microsoft, and I remember a kid asking me how many bathrooms my house had. Another kid randomly asked me, "Does your mom drive a Mercedes?" And I was like, "No, she drives a Ford Fusion."