There was something else I’d read about lottery winners, too, that used to run through my head when I stood in line at the convenience store to buy my tickets every Friday. Somebody did a study that showed that lottery winners aren’t any happier, on average, than anyone else as soon as six months after they win the jackpot. In fact, they even compared lottery winners to people who’d been in terrible accidents and were left partially paralyzed, and lottery winners weren’t any happier than those poor suckers. I guess the more striking fact there is that the paraplegics aren’t any less happy than the general public by the time six months have gone by. People can get used to anything. They can get used to having nothing, and they can get used to having everything. And I guess you’re as happy as you decide to make yourself.

So I always said that if I won the lottery, I would find a way to make myself happy, and I would find a way to keep myself happy. And I started thinking about something else I’d read: that happy and successful people tend to surround themselves with other happy and successful people. And I used to interpret that as meaning that if you’re not lucky enough to be surrounded by happy and successful people, you’re pretty much screwed. But I think there’s another way to look at it. Maybe it means that what you’re supposed to do is whatever you can to make the people around you happy and successful. If you can make some kind of difference in their lives, then they’ll have something extra to give when it comes time to make a difference in your life. I don’t know. I’m not an expert on this kind of thing.

And so I also tried to take that idea into consideration when I waited for the balls to pop up out of the machine and tell me that I’d become a millionaire. I decided I would take some of that money I make on my very sensible and well-planned investment strategy, and I would use it to help the people around me. I would pay the credit card that’s the only thing standing in the way of someone’s going back to school, and I’d also pay her tuition, at least until she’s had enough time to figure out if that’s what she wants to do. I’d pay off a couple of mortgages for people. I’d send one very exhausted guy on a vacation. I would help someone start a business.

Well, my plan didn’t count on how far the stock market could fall in six months, and I guess I figured on having more patience than I actually do have. So I had to start drawing on my principal if I wanted to make some people happy and successful. And then I got laid off from my job, so the next thing I knew, I was having to take living expenses out of that fund, too. I figured as long as I was out of work anyway, if I was going to send my friend on vacation, he might as well have company. Man, did we have a good time.

© 2009 Edward F. Gumnick

From my vantage point at the tail end of Lane Three, I had an unobstructed view of the activity inside the bank. I watched the tellers move in a careful choreography of slow-paced service. I was impressed that the young lady with the horn-rimmed glasses made such short work of the truckload of construction workers, dispatching half a dozen envelopes of cash in a couple of minutes. We eased forward. The blonde in front of me loaded her paperwork into the canister at a satisfactory pace. She placed it in the tube, then studied the machinery a moment longer than I might have liked before pressing the “Send” button.

I don’t know how much time went by before some movement drew my focus back to the world inside the bank. The preppy boy working Lane One was trying to solicit the assistance of Miss Horn Rims. Miss Horn Rims stared out into space past the tinted glass. She didn’t seem to be listening to Preppy Boy, and she’d also stopped processing the blonde’s transaction. Preppy Boy looked increasingly agitated. I rolled up my windows to shut out the gathering exhaust fumes and switched the air conditioner to “recirculate.”

The forty-ish woman working Lane Two stopped what she was doing and tried to intervene, but the look on Miss Horn Rims’ face told me she’d had enough of this conversation. She turned to face Preppy Boy, mouthed a few calm words, and then exited the bank through the door at the far end of the booth. She left the door swinging open, walked across in front of the drive-through lanes, turned right when she got to the sidewalk, and then disappeared behind the Mobil station next door.

Five or six cars back in Lane One, a driver honked a couple of times. From the tinny speaker two lanes away, I heard the voice of Preppy Boy shouting something unintelligible at the old lady in the Cadillac. I eyed the line behind me in my rear-view mirror. I stared at the back of the blonde’s head. I wished that I had eaten breakfast.

From where I stood waiting to fork over my $6.50, I could see the stack of plates at the near end of the buffet table. There were seven plates left when I came in out of the driving rain, placed the battered remnants of my umbrella behind the ficus in the corner, and took my place in line. Two plates remained by the time it was my turn to pay. The cashier struggled to replace the roll of tape in the register. As I pocketed my change, a fat-assed man with a satisfied grin and a greasy napkin tucked into his shirt collar made a dash for the last plate.

A waitress dumped a batch of dinner rolls into one of the steam table trays, then turned on her heel and was halfway back to the kitchen before I could form the words to ask for her help. Two busboys engaged in a frenetic competition to evade eye contact with me, one sloshing iced tea into three-quarters-full glasses, the other noisily collecting dirty dishes, silverware, and napkin litter into a plastic tub.

I walked toward the kitchen door, arriving there just in time to head off the shift manager before he could disappear into no man’s land.

“Please, sir, we need some more plates.”

Three-and-a-half minutes later, my patience was rewarded. I piled lightbulb-warmed food onto my steamy-hot plate and carried it to a table. I used my napkin to clear away the worst of the crumbs from the plastic checkered tablecloth, then unloaded my tray. The chicken fricassee must have been good when it was hot. The rolls weren’t so dry that a couple of pats of butter couldn’t make them palatable. My mood was much improved by the time I headed for the dessert table.

When I got there, Mr. Fat-Ass was scooping the second-to-last wedge of pecan pie onto a plate. I watched in disbelief when he reached back under the hot lights with the pie server and slipped it under the last slice. Our eyes met as he lifted it toward the plate. Did he see sadness, frustration, rage? Whatever he saw made him hesitate long enough for me to grab a plate and hold it hopefully out toward the sweet object of our shared desire. He deserves some credit for the graciousness of his surrender.

That hunk of pie was all I could see as I pivoted back toward my table, so I didn’t notice the busboy until it was too late to avoid a collision.

© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick