Saturday night some friends and I went through a scenario that I remember going through as far back as grade school. Saturday night some of us played the Powerball, and it’s funny to think back to about 1970 when we would ask each other, “What would you do with $100?” All our answers were very similar – “I’d get me a minibike, and a BB gun, and spend the rest on baseball cards.” Maybe in 1970 you could have done just that, but we had no clue what $100 was and imagined it to be enough to make us really happy. Those aren’t bad dreams actually. All it would take to make us happy beyond our dreams would be to shoot some bottles, ride fast and get muddy, and sit with a flashlight at night trading Clemente for Vida Blue and Gene Tenace.
So the scenario Saturday night was, “What would you do if you won tens of millions?” There was the fun stuff like trips and SUV’s, nicer houses, things like that, but then someone asked, “OK, but beyond all the fun stuff, how would you live? What would you do when you woke up in the morning, and where would you want to wake up?” Amazingly most of us said we would not see or want much change at all.
When you get down to the basics of living, and the important things that you remember fondly in later years, those are the things that make you happiest. I know me, for example, even if I won tens of millions, I would still get online first thing every morning to see what comments my friends left me and have a few laughs. The town I live in still has some surviving mom and pop stores, like the one I was at earlier today where I bought stuff to make vegetable soup. I walk in and the owner says hi, and asks me if I golfed over the weekend and he remembers I was having trouble hitting irons. I am sure they have to work hard to compete with the Super Wal-Mart a few miles away, but never for me. I would much rather pay $1.50 there for a bag of carrots than $1.35 at some chain, even if I am down to my last few dollars. I’m going to carry some firewood in that I cut and split myself, which is not something I do just because it saves on my gas bill, but because I love doing it. I’d still go to my parent’s house on Thanksgiving Day no matter what I drove there or how it looked in their driveway, and I’d still bake something on my own to take. My daughter came in from college over the weekend and spent the night here. Nothing in the way of surroundings would have mattered. We still would have sat in the floor in front of the TV eating chips and playing Trivial Pursuit. It’s a gloomy day weather-wise here. There’s a heavy mist falling making it impossible to see the surrounding hills, and yes I would love to be further south golfing or even lying on a beach, but not every day or even most days. There’s just something very romantic about the rain or being snowed in sitting by a fire that I could never do without.
When I think about it now, I have 90% of what I would have if I won the lottery, and that’s pretty damned nice. The trips and playthings will have to wait a while, is all.
