The Penniless Pair

“I am so tired of being broke,” Rosa told me last night on the phone.

“I hear you,” I replied, emphatically.

The twilight zone in between when you run out of money and your next disability check arrives is neither the most comfortable nor fun of times.

“What are you going to do when you get your check?” I then asked, curious, and trying to make small talk after a quiet awkward moment.

“I am ordering a large pizza, the works, with extra cheese and sauce.”

I laughed jovially. It is always the simplest of pleasures you miss the most when you are broke and amidst that penniless twilight zone.

“I am going to fill up my car and take a long night drive out into the countryside as I smoke cigars,” I told her as far as my post penniless dream was concerned. “My car is on dead empty as far as gas goes these days.”

“Oh, that sounds so nice,” She replied. “Can I go?”

“Sure,” I said. “I would enjoy sharing in the joy.”

“It’s a date!” Rosa said, enthusiastically.

“Well, let’s just call it a gathering of friends amidst similar circumstances as we enjoy our new found largesse,” I replied after another awkward silent moment.

Rosa then told me good night and that she was going to bed to dream of rolling in piles of cash. I smiled, laughed, and told her good night as well as I hung up the phone. I then went and lay in the bed as I thought of the concept of money. We place so much value and stock into little pale green pieces of paper that really aren’t worth more than the pieces of paper they are printed upon. Yet, society places so much value onto those pieces of pressed cellulose that it controls the very fabric and direction of our lives. Most people live their whole lives and can never think of the concept of money objectively or abstractly. It is just another one of those things in life that just is and they work all their lives for those pieces of paper that I call food tokens. I realized I abhorred the concept of money, after all, and it left a bittersweet taste in my mouth as I went to sleep last night. I don’t want to live with the rest of my life juxtaposed between periods of comfortableness and poverty as is seems the case these days. Life shouldn't be about a constant hardscrabble crawl out of depravity.