He lived his whole childhood on the wrong side of town wearing last year’s crappy sneakers because his mother could not stay away from the casino. Then one day, his mother was walking across the street and got hit by a car and died. It was the best day of his life because finally, there was money and food and a place to live that was a couple of notches above abject squalor. Ten bucks seemed like a small fortune then. Twenty was living beyond his means.
He remembered the first time when there was actually money – MONEY – in his pocket for school. It was a twenty dollar bill. His dad – worn out from two jobs and raising three kids on his own – flipped him the bill on a Monday morning. Richard knew it was the last one in his dad’s wallet and when he handed it over, Richard knew that he had more than just twenty dollars. He had the family fortune, a pizza dinner for Friday and maybe – just maybe – a birthday cake for Trisha. But his dad had passed the last bill to him because he had been bitching the whole weekend about a school trip to the Royal Ontario Museum. Everyone … and that was EVERYONE … was going. He needed the twenty bucks to cover the cost of the bus and the admission. There wouldn’t be enough for lunch but he had been scamming lunches for years … a little of this … a touch of that … by the start of afternoon classes, he was almost not hungry any more. So his dad gave him the twenty. Just like that. And the deep sunken eyes looked defeated.
Richard remembered being elated for exactly one hour. He had the twenty bucks. He could go on the trip. And then the twenty dollars started to get heavy. And valuable. He started putting his hand in his pocket every now and then just to make sure that it was still there. At one point, he thought he had lost it because it had gotten all crammed into the corner. His heart exploded in his chest and the panic he felt was not about the trip. All he could think about was Trish and how he had lost her birthday money.
When he got home that night, he couldn’t stand the responsibility of carrying the twenty around with him. When his younger brother and sister had gone to bed, he came out and silently handed over the bill to his father. His dad had been sitting in his beat up arm chair, reading the tabloid newspaper they gave away free in the apartment lobby. He looked up over his glasses and put down the paper.
“What’s this?”
“The twenty.”
“Yeah. I can see that. I thought you wanted to go on that trip.”
“Naw …” He shrugged and tried to leave the room without anything more said. “Changed my mind.”
“We can afford it,” His father said. It was almost angry. His faced was wrinkled with a frown and deep circles under his eyes.
Richard remembered it as if it were yesterday. He came back to his father’s side before he spoke.
“We can afford it.” This time, his father sounded like he was working hard to sound reasonable. He even nodded to sell the lie.
“No,” he told his dad. “No, we can’t. Take the money. Spend it on Friday.” He stepped back a step. “It’s ok.”
In that moment, Richard became an adult. Every second of every day after that had become filtered by the lens of responsibility. He came home more. He was less of a shit with his father. He did the dishes once or twice. When the chance came up that he could have a summer job at the ticket booth of Captain Jack’s Pirates Cove, the circles under his dad’s eyes faded a little.
And that job at Captain Jack’s. What a job. What an education. He learned more about the world at that shitty job than three degrees at an Ivy League University. He learned how to handle cash, how to count money, how to make change quickly and accurately. He learned how to satisfy customers and he learned that charm, coupled with his outward appearance was an asset of immeasurable worth.
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