what you make of it
Nicholas Burtchaell
A teenage girl picked out a coat from the Sears clearance aisle. Made up of a tough, caramel-brown wool, it stretched down to her knees and looked very fashionable with the lapels and brown ivory buttons. It fit her surprisingly well; when she brought her hands down, they found two pockets with ease. They were deep pockets, too.
She took it off and brought it to her mom, who looked it over and approved it. The coat went home with her.
She definitely got her money’s worth. She wore it all the time, it was so fashionable. She even wore it during sweater-in-the-morning, sweat-by-lunch season, and it earned her the nickname of coat-girl.
One morning she was wearing it on the bus to school, and, as she was stepping off, she carelessly brought her right arm down from the handrail and dragged it down the side of it. Suspecting nothing, she began walking towards the entrance of the school, but the teenagers around her started giggling and whispering to each other as if they were in elementary school again. Feeling self-conscious, she crossed her arms and looked down to avoid their gazes, only to catch a glimpse of her arm. A huge, black oil stain had appeared on the right cuff of her coat. She nearly fainted from embarrassment. Immediately, she took it off and stuffed it inside her bag, but it was too late. Word got out that coat-girl had gotten an oil stain on it, of all things. The pity! Such a coat didn’t deserve that impetulant of an owner.
When she got out of school, she knew that she couldn’t ever be seen with the coat again, knowing that the teenagers would make fun of her every day. She had to get rid of it without her mom suspecting, but how would she go about doing so?
She most definitely was not the type to just throw it away, she couldn’t bring herself to just throw it in a dumpster. The best idea she could think of was to donate it to the thrift store and tell her mom she lost it.
And she did. Her mom was extremely upset with her for losing it, but it was worth it. The teasing from the teenagers only lasted a week before everything returned to how it was before the coat. Slowly, the nickname coat-girl was phased out and they began using her real name once again.
A few weeks later, a man walked into the thrift store. He noticed the coat as he was shuffling through the racks. It was a women’s coat, but that didn’t bother him; nobody cared much about that. The only other thing was an oil stain on the right cuff, and that didn’t bother him either. It was a great deal, priced at a dollar, especially since the man was half broke. Why else would he be at the thrift store?
The coat was the only thing he bought, and he left the store with it on.
Now, he was quite fond of collecting shopping bags and knotting them together to make blankets that he would sell to people. Environmentalists were especially interested in them it seemed, as they would buy him out whenever they saw him.
He made his rounds collecting bags at the grocery and Wal-mart. By the end of the day, he learned to walk with his arm turned slightly inward and tucked close to his body, so people wouldn’t see the stain. It was just, you know, he didn’t want people to get the wrong impression of him if they did happen to notice him.
He tossed a coin he’d found in his pocket and started to make his way to his apartment. A block before he got there, a woman with a camera stopped him and asked him whether or not he’d like to sell the idea of his plastic bag blankets to her company for a small sum of money and stock. The man seemed very interested, but he took it with a grain of salt. Why would someone approach him this way seriously?
The woman was serious. When asked how much money she was willing to spare, she replied with a number followed by very many zeroes. Small sum, indeed— more like a small fortune.
The man thought it over, absentmindedly thumbing the coin he’d found earlier. In the end, he accepted the offer. How could he not? This was his chance to change the world for the better.
Immediately, the woman with the camera opened her briefcase, which was filled with hundred dollar bills, gave it to him, had him sign a contract, and was off on her way.
Years later, the man was very rich, and his plastic bag blankets had spread throughout the entire world, and the man was one of the CEOs. Despite all of this, the man never forgot that he was once poor. He still wore the same coat that he got from the thrift store every day, holding his right arm awkwardly askew.
Of course he was questioned about it, and his reply was always the same; “I wear it because it reminds me of my roots— where I started. As long as I never forget what I once was, I’ll never change.”
One day, he got very sick, and as he lay on his deathbed, he still wore his coat. His death day came, and they took his clothes off to dress the body for burial. As per his last will and testament, all his possessions were donated to his local thrift store, and the coat went back to its original place.
Years more later, the coat had acquired a whole new layer of dust. A new man discovered it on the rack sitting there, a cloud of dust puffing off of it. It had been marked down several times and was now on sale for a dollar.
A great deal, the man thought to himself as he shook the coat free of the dust. He didn’t even care that it was a women’s coat or about the oil stain on the cuff. It was a quarter, man; it was a great deal. He walked out of the thrift store with the coat on.
Now, this man was entirely different from the coat’s previous owners. He had no cares for the feelings of others. He had morals, but for his own good. He was a gambler, a risk-taker, and not quite a criminal; he had no need to steal because he’d inherited his father’s fortune. And that was on the verge of changing, as he had dried it up considerably using it on lottery tickets, booze, and fast-food, and was starting to run low on money.
Speaking of lottery tickets, it was time for the man to go buy some at the local gas station. Hiking up his ripped jeans, he pulled out a tri-fold camouflage wallet from his back pocket and opened it. He counted every single bill in it, a pastime that he enjoyed thoroughly. Even though he didn’t have a lot of it, touching money gave him a sense of authority. That, and he liked to make sure that they were aligned properly so their creases would be the same.
When he arrived at the gas station, he grabbed his three powerball tickets and cut in front of everyone in line as usual, and, usually no one said a word, but this time a woman stepped back in front of him gesturing to the back of the line. Was she really trying to teach him manners? Didn’t she know that he only did things for the benefit of himself? He made his way back to the front, only to be gently pushed back again.
“May I serve the next guest in line please?” The cashier’s voice rang out.
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He shoved the woman and walked up in front of everyone for a final time as everyone else stared. Did he care what they thought? Certainly not.
From the ground, the woman stared at the back of the man’s ripped jeans as he pulled the camouflage wallet out of his back pocket. He was most certainly not the friendly type.
Outside the gas station, the man scratched the numbers off one-by-one; he could not believe his luck. He had the million dollar winning ticket. Before long, he was having his picture taken with one of those huge checks.
You would think that after acquiring such a huge amount of money twice, he would learn how to spend it properly, but you would be wrong. The first thing he did was make a run to buy himself some fancy new clothes and jewelry. As soon as he got outside the store, he tossed his old clothes out in the dumpster behind the store. He couldn’t associate himself with filth anymore, so why hang onto them?
The coat laid there in the dumpster, soaking up garbage juices all week until the trash men came to clear it out. As usual, they checked it out just to make sure there wasn’t anything overly expensive they threw out. They never even considered the brown coat squished in the side, oil stain visibly showing, covered in garbage juice. Appalled by the smell of it all, the trash men quickly shut the lid and went on with their job.
It took the man less than a month to spend his new fortune on a luxurious penthouse, a new Cadillac, and, of course, all the exotic food and scotch he could handle. When he started running low again, he resorted to his old tactic of buying lottery tickets, expecting to have the same luck. After all, if he should win it once, it was most certainly possible to win it again.
But he should have known better. Little by little, he was reduced to the bare minimum. It started with the exotic food and scotch, then moved on to takeout and whiskey, and finally fast-food and beer. Soon he was left with ten bucks to his name. Everything he had bought was gone, sold to make money in hopes of winning the lottery again. He finally faced the fact that maybe he wasn’t going to win again.
With some of his remaining money, he bought a single lottery ticket and scratched it, only to be disappointed once again. He had eight dollars left.
He walked down the street to the Burger King and ordered a Whopper with fries and a drink. When he got his food, he sat down and ate it in silence, eating every last bit. He finished, got back up, and walked to the park.
Sitting down on a bench, he pulled out his camouflage wallet to count his money, an old habit of his, only to find a single dollar bill with a solid crease down the center. He closed his wallet and held the bill up in the air, staring at it. For the first time, with the wind blowing around him and the trees rustling and people chattering, the man finally felt connected to the world with this single, crisp bill. He finally felt the realization of everything that could be enjoyed, and realized he had abused it. Abused it and thrown it away. He wanted to be rid of it all, rid of the guilt. And the last evidence he had of this past was this bill.
He closed his eyes and let it slip from his fingers. A sharp rustle of wind picked it up off the ground and it took it away, so that when the man opened his eyes, he couldn’t spot it. A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. He was glad it was gone.
Later, somewhere in the park, a dollar fluttered in a bush, trapped in its leaves but wanting to escape in the wind. A small child giggled from excitement and snatched it out, running to buy an ice cream.
After all, money is money.