Why Take a Chance on Being Rich?

It is no wonder our children are totally confused about their future and us. What the world will be in 10 years is taking shape right now in homes across this great land today.
Consider the dilemma in the following parent-child conversation. While it is totally fabricated, I trust the reader will see the point.
“Where are you going, Dad?” Lily asked. She wondered what was happening, since she saw Dad ask Mom for $20, which is not something he normally would do after supper.
“I’m going down to the Point Shopping Basket to buy some lottery tickets. The jackpot is $135 million, and we could certainly do a lot with that money. Would you like to come with me?” Dad replied.
As they drive to the lottery agent, Lily, an astute young lady in high school, has been watching current events. She knows there is a lot of chatter in the news about tax rates going up for everyone if Congress plays stupid, and something about the government wanting to tax those in high income brackets, over $250,000.
“Dad, do you like you job?” Lily asks. “Sure, I wouldn’t be a plumber if I didn’t like the work. Sometimes I get sick and tired of all day crawling under people’s leaking tubs and sinks and toilets and breathing moldy air,” Dad answered.
“So, what would you do if you won $135 million?” Lily continued as the store with the lottery sales machine came into sight.
“I don’t know right now, I’ll have to win it first,” Dad replied. His head was filled with dreams of an airplane and new surfboard, maybe a Mercedes for his wife, college money for Lily.
The daughter-dad pair went into the store, and there had to be at least 15 other people in line ahead of them. All were waiting with rabbits’ feet and lucky clothes on as they clutched their currency. Most talked nervously how they planned to spend the loot and eternity in idle pleasures, no more work for them, no more waking up before dawn to work aat jobs they hated for bosses they despised for wages that didn’t cover their bills.
“Dad, I am confused about all this, people wanting to be rich, yet the government telling us that rich people are bad, and they should pay more taxes so the rest of us can live better. Mr. Grimes, my history teacher, said that in the past, in Russia the Bolsheviks had the idea to get rid of all the rich people, and that the working class, the proletariat, would run the country. So they did that, killed a lot of rich people, took their land, killed the czar and his family and took over running the country. That lasted maybe 60 years, then it fell apart.”
“Yeah, so what does that have to do with us trying to win the $135 million?” Dad asked Lily.
“Well, if you win all that money, let’s just say you win, we’ll be like Grandpa says, ‘Filthy rich.’ Then, all my friends won’t like me, because I’ll have money and they won’t. We’ll have to move to a neighborhood where rich people live. I know some of those girls, and they’re terrible snobs. We’ll be just like them.”
“No, we won’t, honey,” Dad reassured her.
“Yes, we’ll be changed, Dad. I heard you and Mom talking, and saying if you won, you’d quit your job and we might even move to Hawaii, and you’d surf for the rest of your life. I heard you talking…” said Lily. Dad shakes his head in disbelief that Lily would listen in on a private conversation.
They move closer to the lottery machine. Dad looks at his set of numbers, and there’s Andrew Jackson, staring him in the face from that $20 bill.
“Girl’s got a point,” Dad thinks to himself. Then he broadens his thought process: “Every day, more and more, it seems like we are being driven into ‘class warfare.’ Poor against rich. Rich aren’t paying their fair share, poor paying nothing, middle class, what’s left of it, shouldering the bulk of the bills for everything. This isn’t the America I knew as a boy.”
“So, if rich is so bad, why are there so many of us standing in line here to buy a chance to become one of those evil wealthy folks?” Dad wonders aloud. The woman behind him rubs her rabbit’s foot.
“I was wondering the very same thing,” said Lily.
Dad looks at the $20 bill. He’s next in line to buy a ticket to be obscenely rich, just a step away.
Then he turned to Lily and said, “I didn’t realize how rich I was. Come on, let’s go home. No sense even trying to be rich. We’d only have to pay more taxes,” he said. The lady with the rabbit’s foot quickly steps up and takes his place.
“Mr. Grimes said the Communists ran Russia into the ground, so their idea must not have been so good after all,” Lily remarked as they got into Dad’s pickup truck.
“And to think, that’s where it seems we’re headed, down that same road,” said Dad, his mind astir.
The family somehow tried to stay awake until the winning numbers were drawn in the $135 million lottery. Dad looked at his numbers, not one matched the winners. He still had that Andrew Jackson $20 bill in his wallet. He also wondered if the rabbit’s foot helped that lady behind them win big, probably not.
“Guess it just wasn’t meant to be,” Dad muttered, half to himself.
Lily had drifted off to sleep. Mom was nodding off. Dad realized just then what he had no millionaire could buy and no government could tax. Plumbing is honest work, and Lord knows, there will always be leaky pipes.