Driving around the other day, my son and I saw a Tesla Cybertruck zhwhmmmming by, and it got me thinking: In our hypercompetitive, materialistic, keep-up-with-the-Joneses-Kims-and-Patels culture (you can’t keep up with the Patels — they’re both neurosurgeons), what’s the biggest status symbol? The ultimate flex?

No doubt, the Cybertruck makes a statement. If you’ve got kids, a mortgage, or pay any form of tuition and still shell out for a Picasso Truck, you’re either a billionaire, bonkers or both. Mega-yachts are nice, but they’re the pumpkin spice latte of status symbols — way too seasonal. A big fancy house or timepiece? Been there, done that. Well, not personally.

No, I’ve thought about this for a good 10 minutes, and there’s just one clear answer here: a secret room. Think about it. It’s the ultimate in mystery, intrigue and exclusivity, since by definition no one should know about it. Admittedly, this also creates complications: If you have a status symbol, and no one knows about it, is it still a status symbol?

There are also practical difficulties. For one, keeping a secret room from the rest of your family would take a lot of work. There’d have to be a long vacation during the construction, and at the last second you’d have to stay behind with COVID. You’d also need a permanently stocked fridge in your secret room, so if anyone asks where the dickens you’ve been again, you could nonchalantly say that you just stepped out to the store, with the grocery bags to prove it.

Furthermore, if it was ever discovered that you built a secret room at exorbitant cost under the nose of your family, the kind only accessible by plinking the correct sequence of keys on the piano and rotating the wall sconce counterclockwise three times, well, there’d be some ’splainin to do. There would be questions, probably some divorces. Your sputtering explanations would be found wanting. But on the plus side, that would add to the mystery of it all.

When it comes to interior design, you could go a number of routes with a secret room.

To help offset the indefensible amount of money you spent on its construction, you could furnish it with a reasonably priced sofa from Wayfair and a modest TV with a Netflix subscription. But if it was ever discovered that you built such a pedestrian secret room behind a 40-foot waterfall at the end of a torchlit, skull-lined catacombs so you could binge-watch “The Bachelor,” the whole thing would be a bit anticlimactic.

Alternatively, you could stock your secret room with the world’s rarest, most exquisite whiskey collection, some burner phones, multiple passports and briefcases filled with foreign currencies and gold bars. An air hockey table too, for funsies. But since no one would know, it could get a bit lonely.

All things considered, though, I still think a secret room is the way to go. The Joneses, Kims and Patels?

They’re billionaires. You’re Batman.

And your capacity to be content with no one knowing speaks to an air of self-assuredness, confidence and mystery that would be the envy of anyone the world over. If, you know, they knew. Which they won’t. Because secret room.

But even Batman had Alfred, and sometimes Robin, so I suppose you could tell your spouse. A husband-and-wife team fortified by a secret oasis, reasonably priced sofa from Wayfair and some Korean dramas? Now you’re flexin’. Just don’t tell the kids.

Zach Przystup (zprzystup@gmail.com) works for the Fulbright Program at the U.S. Department of State.