RoboNomics

Chapter 27 - 2016

The thought 'debt' flashes across my mind and my eyes snap open. I prop myself up in bed and peer over at Austin's sleeping body. 

The red LEDs of the alarm clock glow in the half-light: 5:53 a.m. Still too early. I sink back down onto my pillow and pull our comforter back up to my chin.

I stare wide-eyed at the ceiling. 

The first thing I did when I got my first credit card was play the lottery, I think. That was my first mistake. 

I recall walking with my grandfather to the corner store every Saturday morning. He would play the lottery and spoil me with sweets. 

I remember the summer days of heat before the store had an air conditioning unit. The smell of industrial cleaner and mothballs rose from the dirty linoleum tile of the store. That scent is mixed up, in my memory, with the taste of the white lemon popsicles.

"Don't let your grandmother see," he would say -- the dilemma of being a grandfather and adopted father warring within him. 

He and my maternal grandmother raised me. My grandfather always hugged me goodbye before school with tears in his eyes. He was not the disciplinarian of the couple.

I don't remember much about my mother. I do remember she had brown hair that was like a mist hovering around her head. 

I don't recall what her face looked like, even though my grandparents -- her parents – never tired of telling me I looked like her.

I do remember that before she passed away, my mother also bought lottery tickets. No one in the family would indulge in a daily or even weekly cup of take-out coffee. But they always bought lottery tickets. 

They were forever buying them and never winning anything. It was as much a part of our family routine as making the bed each morning. So when I hit eighteen, I started buying them too. I thought of it as a just-in-case investment in my future.

I trace a crack in the ceiling with my eyes. A morning doze eludes me. My jaw is tight with worry and my mind is spinning. 

The thought of debt comes on at times with the violence of a hurricane. Other times, it threatens like a distant thunderstorm. The possibility of losing everything woke me up. It won't let me go back to sleep.

I leap from bed. I need to solve or at least temporarily lessen my troubles. I tear through our house, looking around frantically.

Maybe I could sell some stuff, I think. But who would buy what I have to sell? 

I have a closet stuffed to the brim with old clothes. They represent a major reason why I'm indebted in the first place. They add to other expenses like the student loans, the car leases, the mortgage, the vacations, and the dinners out. 

Would we trade all that now? I ask myself. Making memories, spoiling ourselves with our affluence? 

Austin made a large salary and I hadn't done so bad myself. But we didn't save any of it. After buying a house, it hardly seemed worth it to save beyond our pensions. 

Especially since the money always seemed to just keep coming. We'd amassed a home full of beautiful, useless things. I didn't save a penny. Instead, I bought lottery tickets.

I have books. I'd had some success selling those when I was at the university. Whenever I needed a quick twenty bucks for food or booze. 

There are also electronics. I have one of those old tablet computers, aging and obsolete, laying on a shelf somewhere.