A man steps onto the sidewalk,
his new two hundred dollar shoes catch the sunlight.
He checks his watch.
Five minutes past noon, already.
He has twenty five minutes left for lunch
and however much he would like to go to The Blue Room and blow fifty bucks on lunch, he only has time to walk to the hot dog stand done the street.
"Oh well," he thinks, "maybe it will bring back some nostalgic memories of my father."
He laughs.
After taking one bite of his hotdog, he remembers how his father used to yell at him.
"Timmy," his father would say, "when are you going to get off your *** and earn money like a man? When are you going to make your father proud?"
His mother would yell from the next room, which would always spark an argument.
"John," she'd yell, "don't yell at my son! He's 14, he doesn't need a job!"
They would yell and yell and each time Timmy's father hit his wife, he would take another swig from his flask. He ended up drinking himself to death by the time John was in college (which his father never paid a time for).
Lighting up one-twentieth of a twelve dollar pack of cigarettes,
he began walking back to his office, where he made the better end of $90,000 dollars annually, after taxes.
He heard a voice beside him ask for a cigarette.
Turning around, not at all surprised with what he saw, he grudgingly handed one-twentieth of his twelve dollar pack of cigarettes to a *****, unshaven man.
"Thanks a lot, white"
"What was that supposed to mean," thought John.
"What the hell was that supposed to mean?" John asked the man.
"Chill out, white, man, I mean white collar, you know, rich boy?"
"You know why I'm a rich boy, huh dirt?" John never usually said such things but thinking about his father put him an a bad mood. As did the breaking down of his self tanner the night before.
"I'm a rich man because I work hard, and I don't sit around on my *** and *** smokes off a man who actually earns them. Why don't you get a job, huh? Why don't you stop being a *******? Why don't you stop being the black eye of modern America and do something with your life?"
John was breathing hard at this point. He would lose no sleep over saying those things.
The man smiled politely, and looked at John for a second, before saying:
"I don't make money, simply because I don't need money."
A pause.
"Do you realize why I don't need money? I don't need money because it isn't important. Do you know what is important?"
The man tapped his heart, and then his head,
"These are important. My heart is healthier than yours and so is my head. I am free. I can sit on the street corner and eat your scraps, or I can take a bus to California and eat Californian's scraps. I am free. I can do whatever I want, man. I can run with the bulls in Spain, I can run with the taxis here. But leave, your lunch our is almost over and we wouldn't your boss getting mad at you, would we? So run along, little slave, little slave to money. Have a nice day and thanks for the smoke."
The man left before John did.
John called in sick to work, and he was indeed sick.
How could this man possibly think he was better than John?
John didn't lose any sleep over what he said,
but he lost a lot of sleep,
and a lot of ***,
and a lot of money,
because this man was right.
John wasn't free.