People always ask me what I would do if I had a million dollars. I don’t know why people always ask me this. Probably because I owe them around that much, I’d guess.
This is not a simple question to answer for most people. Many fall back on a default, like paying off student loans, buying a new home, or going to see The Passion of the Christ 100,000 times. A friend said he’d spend it all on laserdiscs, Salon.com stock and the presidential candidacy of Dennis Kucinich, which is a totally cool idea and one that couldn’t possibly go wrong. But those aren’t altruistic enough for me. If one were handed that much money, shouldn’t it be spent on the greater good? Shouldn’t one think about what the world needs? I know I would.
What would you do with a million dollars? To me, it’s simple.
With that one million dollars, I would join one-hundred million of those record clubs where you can get 12 pop hits for a penny. The CDs will arrive at my workplace, where the goofy Puerto Rican boy—the one who brings the packages by everybody’s desk, and who always tells me I have nice hair—he will ask me to sign for them, which I will do with a flirtatious smile and maybe a little butt wiggle.
I will then sell those 1.2 billion CDs at a local pawn shop at a discounted rate, say, five bucks a pop. I will bring an extra couple of bucks with me in case I want to buy some old Nintendo games, like Excitebike or Metroid. They also sell cassettes for 50 cents there, so I plan on buying something by 50 Cent. Whose birthday is it, shorty? It’s MY birthday!
I will net $6 billion from that sale, but I will not become a complacent fat cat. With the new capital, I will reinvest into the marketplace. I will take my cash, and I will use it to join six hundred billion of those record clubs where you can get 12 pop hits for a penny. When they arrive, my exhausted yet charmed Puerto Rican mail boy will come by my cubicle, which is now encrusted with diamond pushpins and an emerald-covered bottle of white out. I will smile, and he will smile, and I will sign again for the packages. I might even wink.
I will then take those CDs to the pawn shop and sell them at an even further discounted rate of four dollars a disc, to show my magnanimous nature.
I will then use $1 trillion of that $4.8 trillion to join 100 trillion of those record clubs where you can get 12 pop hits for a penny. I will keep those CDs. The other $3.8 trillion, however, I will use to buy the continent of Africa, where I will cure the AIDS crisis, plow down the rain forests to build a massive Pier 1 Imports, and, having put in a full day, subsequently listen to my CDs in peace. With my Puerto Rican mail boy. His name is Herbert, but if I cut him a check, I’m hoping he’ll let me call him Juan.
Will Leitch
sings mezzo-soprano at The Black Table and recorded the L.P., Life as a Loser.
Write to Y.P.R.
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Right on, Y.P.R.
