Even the nicest people can be dismantled by an ongoing adversity. I'm sitting back in the coffee shop and Alex is talking to a FEMA inspector who seems rather busy. We were trying to make pleasant conversation, but his answers are curt. He appears to be a friendly gentleman. I see him in here often and he always has a big smile on his face. Now I am put off by the way he's treating Alex. He's obviously busy and it's understandable that he doesn't have the time to dissolve into frivolous conversation. Maybe I judged his smile wrongly. I guess it's just as dangerous to assume that people have good intentions as it is to assume the worst. The reality is that strangers are just that, mysterious individuals who have provided no context for their entire personal history. He might be a phony in the Holden Caufield sense of the word or he might just be worn down from the same incessant questions he encounters day in and day out, like a college student who is always ask about their major. Sometimes for me, it doesn't matter what the question is, but who asks the question in the first place. I guess that's pretty revealing about me.
I decided today that I miss playing poker. Harrah's is still boarded up and I guess it would be ridiculous of me to try and gamble when I'm waiting for money from FEMA. At the same time, like many a gambler, poker just makes me feel good. It's just as much about the fantasy about hitting it big as it is the pure fun of playing the game. When the Hold Em Jackpot would hit twenty or thirty thousnd dollars, I would begin to imagine myself in the scenario of winning all that money. I used to play a game with my co-worker on the way to school everyday last year. During the commute, we always passed the same powerball billboard just before we hit the spillway. Every Thursday and Monday, it would tell us if someone had hit the jackpot the night before. I believe the chances of winning the powerball were one hundred and twenty million to one. I'd have a better chance of getting hit by lightening and being eaten by a shark at the same time. Yet, when it got above fifty million, we'd agree to begin buying our tickets. I promised to buy her a house if I won, and she'd do the same for me. Besides distributing at least half the money among charities, and my immediate family (my extended family wouldn't see a dime, most of them are bad people) I've decided to buy two houses. One normal house for my future family to live in, wife and kids, and a secret underground house in the back yard. The purpose would be an escape for me to a pimped out abode decked out with all the incredible futuristic electronic ammenities that I could imagine that would be unknown to my children. I feel that I do not want them to be spoiled. When my parents got divorced they began to spoil me even more than I had already been spoiled. It's take a long time for me to develop a strong work ethic and even now I still lack it. While I do take responsibility for my actions, being predisposed to a psychological behaviorist's perspective, I do feel that the environment you grow up in has a significant effect on the development of your personality. Thus, I would like to "shelter" my kids from that type of parenting. It will be difficult. It's always hard to play authoritarian to my students. It will probably infinitely more difficult to do it to my own children. I'll want to give them everything they could possibly want, and I know, I see everyday, the consequences of such a point of view. It's a good thing that winning the powerball is just not a probablility. But damn would it be cool. Big day tomorrow. Back to school. Weekend over. Goodnight fireflies.
