RouseWorld | Wayward Packet

For the Week of 7/9/01

What I want to do
Should I happen to win
The lottery

(Easy Street) — Everyone has an idea of what they would do if they won a large lottery. Mine is no more silly than most I guess. First thing I would do is zoom off around the world in what would start as mostly reasonable sight-seeing. For that reason I would keep a diary. Slowly, however, my travels would turn into an insane spiral of self-destructive partying and ego tripping. But I would keep the diary, through the worst of it — right up to the moment that the fading spark inside me would illuminate the horrible error of my ways.

About the time my corpse body washes up on some pristine private beach, a traveling writer happens upon the wreckage of my diary. Horrified, shaken and moved by the spectacular tale of my implosion under the weight of sudden wealth he edits the diary and releases it under the title: The USA on a $1,000 dollars a Day: The True Diary of an American Lottery Winner. The book quickly becomes an international success.

People read what is soon called The American Diary and are able to see their own self-destructive paths in my own and are able to pull themselves away and rebuild their lives. Thousands and then millions find in the book cathartic release, a moral lesson and a horrible ordeal of the human spirit. Small poor school districts, able only to afford one book for each child each year will choose The American Diary. The citizens of other countries will read the book and marvel at the resilience of the American people and the incredible pressures that they face.

And hundreds of years later, as historians reflect on a world that took the first hesitant steps towards peace, I will be forgotten — but The American Diary will be remembered as the necessary catalyst.

That's all I want.