It occurred to me recently how my purchases will shake out if I win the lottery.
As you know, winning the lottery is the only way Carol and I will ever retire. If we do not hit, we will work until we drop.
That is just the way life works sometimes. I would never have predicted thirty years ago that we would be in this position and yet, here we are.
Fortunately, if we do not bag the big prize, we can draw maximum satisfaction from the simple pleasure and intrinsic reward of working.
Reporting on time every morning (punctuality is highly valued in corporate america), exulting in a job well done, gleefully checking our bank balance on pay day and carefully managing our life as the money slowly drains away until.........................................the next big payday!
Truly a glorious existence.
One we can look forward to, barring unforeseen circumstances, for the next thirty years.
I don't recall telling my mother and father that my goal in life was to become the oldest living, working, liquor store employee. I don't recall that as being my dream.
Still, to be toddling around the store at the age of 91 would be a fulfilling existence. Co-workers would point me out to customers - "That's Old Joe over there. He is 91 and has been working in this store for 32 years. Ask him anything. He has the answer." The customers would make their way over to me, genuflect, chat and press $2 tips into the palm of my hand.
There are worse things.
Anyway, if we do get lucky the first event is dinner with Carol in our favorite restaurant. To celebrate our long standing love and to thank her for putting up with my damaged and diseased mind for all this time.
I would also open up a perpetual line of credit at her favorite Volkswagen dealer so she could purchase a brand spanking new Bug whenever the urge strikes her.
The very next stop I would make would be a local bookstore. The Book Depot, or The Toadstool Bookshop.
I used to think about throwing a massive party or buying a couple more Lincolns or a motorcycle or a home in Arizona and another in Maui.
And the coolest Fedora you have ever fucking seen.
Paying off every loan my sons and their women endure.
Which I will still do.
But first I will buy a stack of books. An absolute mountain of literature.
There are many things that aggravate me about our financially limited lifestyle. The one that hits home the most is the inability to buy every book - and every record - that I want to buy.
Doesn't seem like that should be such a big deal. Seems like buying books and music would be like breathing.
However, budgets kill want.
I'll get to the records in a minute.
When I am standing in a bookstore with a brand new $25 book in my hand, a book that I lust after, when I am in that position and I put that book down to wander over to the used book section where I spend $5 on a gently read book, it annoys me.
My wish list on Amazon is made up solely of books. Forty six of them.
Forty six.
I want all of them right now.
I have spoken about how it feels like music is passing me by. Recently discovering a song by Paul Simon that was released in 1990.
I hear a song or an artist and I think "I gotta buy that. Have to have it. I'll do it with money from the next non-mortgage paying paycheck."
The rest of the bills prevent that in an insidious and relentless way.
The list of music I covet is ten times longer than the list of things I have complained about in these pages.
That is a long goddamn list.
The rest of my life is pretty well blue printed. Either I sling booze until picking up even a 375 ml bottle is too much of a challenge.
Or I enjoy my time stocking libraries in my New Hampshire, Arizona and Maui homes.
And listening to people say: "Carol looks good in that Bug. It suits her perfectly."
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