bay bridge dweller

Fiction scribbles written on too much caffeine

Wow, typing on this device is so fantastic. My fingers seem to glide across the keys as though they were made for each other. Weird, we are, for identifying with man-made objects as equals. It's a bit smaller than any computer I've come across, yet smaller is totally better in this instance. Truth is though it’s not my iPad, the story is so circumstantial and dare I say it, lucky, that you probably won’t believe how it came into my possession. Then again, you’re a computer so you don’t really have a choice if you want to believe me or not.

[wow, it's as if I sense the feelings that I just drew out of you, is that possible?]

You know how they say another man’s trash is another man’s treasure? Well another man’s trash is a half scratched lotto ticket. A bent and folded piece of assumed worthlessness. Whoever you are, you didn’t know that whatever stopped you from scratching the rest of that ticket truly changed your life… without you even noticing.

All I had on me was a quarter, which I was planning to save for a meal, a hot dog maybe, if I could manage to get even that. The last resort was the sidewalk black bags -- I was on the verge of giving up, moping down to the bay bridge and melting into the sea. Becoming one with the ominous water whose rhythm seemed so peaceful, so easy. It was that lotto ticket, the one I found fluttering through the silent town, that changed my mindset from that point on. I used my last quarter for not a hot dog, but to scratch that remaining ticket to its core.

People say that money can’t make you happy, but you don’t know the opposing viewpoint of that statement until you’ve lived and breathed it. Til you've crawled through the streets, mustering the energy to knock on doors and attempt to prove that you're worth a shift. Just one shift, let me prove to you that I can help. It took time to be able to brush off the abundance of downward stares and scoffs that were aimed my way. This all in some way was a pyramid, or a climbing staircase to that moment that I took that freshly scratched ticket to the closest drug store I could find. The one I commonly cocooned outside of come July. I to this day can’t put into words the expression that consumed my face when he, the man behind the counter, told me what that lotto ticket was worth. I suppose it was a combination of all emotions rolled into one; Into one stunned figure, staring at the cashier’s waiting gaze. You can’t be serious. This belongs to him, the man who let it fly. Yet – it belongs to me too, I suppose. From that moment I decided that instead of trying to track down the man it rightfully belonged to, I would do my best to essentially tear this ticket into millions of pieces and scatter them over lost souls. Use the winnings to change the world. No, I don’t want to create the next bigger, better gadget. I want to make people smile, to give people motivation.

To this day I make it a daily requirement to put a smile on people’s faces, to not let my eyes rest until I have made an impact on those I come across. I use the unknown man’s fortune to do so. So, realistically, this iPad isn’t mine, but it is one of the many results of that whirlwind day that my world changed flight plans. Houston, we have no problem. I’d like to think that whoever the ticket belonged to, that they would be honored to know what it has accomplished and who it has made me. I’m no longer the bay bridge dweller, but the man behind the curtain of smiles that coat the streets. And for this I am forever grateful.