'Get Money'

I woke up at 1:30 pm this last Sunday; needless to say I had a late night- mainly due to the fact that our football team pulled out a ‘W’ over the Nebraskan Corn Huskers (or somthin’ like that) in a “make or break” game for our Hokies. Ironically that was the worst VT game I have seen in a long time, but a win is a win and that’s all that mattered after that last 2 minutes.
“What a headache…,” I mumbled as I slowly sat myself up, wiping the grease and crusty residue left over from the night before off my face. The room spun quickly for a moment, from getting up too quickly then settled back down. I felt gross, but at least totally rested which was a feeling a have not had in a long time. As I got down from my bed I noticed all of my pocketed items that I had thrown on my desk before going to sleep. There they were: a bent up football ticket, a dead phone, a Hokie passport and key, a lighter, a wallet, and a balled up 5 dollar bill. “I wonder how much I spent last night…,” I checked my wallet only to find empty space. “What!? This can’t be right. 5 measly dollars is all I have?” I remembered having at least 40 dollars withdrew from an on-campus ATM around 8:30 pm Saturday night. I remember not eating much that Saturday, so by night I was practically starving (especially having seen all those people at the game with turkey legs). All the restaurants were packed full so I decided 7-11 would be my haven for hunger. I wasn’t planning on spending more than 10 to 15 $ on everything but I was planning on getting a lot of grub. I bought 2 personal pizzas, BBQ chips, a monster energy drink, and some peach ring gummies. So that was 15 bucks at most. I recollected spending the rest on, one: repaying my brother for the football ticket, two: repaying my roommate for lunch last weekend, and three: a cup to fill up.
Money accumulates slowly and disappears very fast; I’ve realized this all throughout different times. “I wish I had more money” is what I think about all too much, “If only, if only.” Not just money to buy more food, more football tickets, and a little bit more of everything… just enough to be comfortable/happy; enough money to not have to worry about how much I’m spending on a triple-quarter pounder at McDonalds or how much I’m spending to buy the 4th season of Lost. I realized I would never, maybe in my entire life, have that kind of money (especially after college), and that got me down. It would remain (at least for the next 4 to 10 years) a dream- a very blurred dream.
I guess you could say I’ve never been the kid with all the money; the rich kid (the spoiled kid essentially). I’ve never been the kid whose parents buy them 12 new outfits from Hollister and A.E. every year, the kid who has the red Mazda 6 (who would later on wreck it backing out of a parking lot too quickly only to be rewarded with another one from Mom and Dad), or the kid who has the Xbox 360, PS3, The 3G iPhone, the 17-inch MacBook Pro, and the 42in Sony Plasma all five feet away from his bed. In fact I despised those kids yet I was close or even best friends with every one of them. I was far from their kind of lifestyles, though- the ‘dad’s wallet’ lifestyle- and it just pissed me off whenever I saw all of them taking their good-fortune for granted. I couldn’t blame them though, hopefully they’ll learn one day how it feels to make their own money and to pay for their own belongings.
I didn’t have it hard but at the same time I didn’t have it easy. I started working at the age of 14, busing at a fancy restaurant, 6 to 7 hour shifts after school four days a week for below minimum wage and hardly any tips. It sucked but I kept at it for about a year then quit just to go bus at another fancy restaurant closer to home and for a little bit better pay. I started to mow lawns during the summer, four lawns to be exact, on top of 5-day/week busing. I needed as much money as I could get. I had a trip to New Mexico for scouts I had to pay (1200$) for this summer and a trip to Germany (est. 2600$) the next summer that had to be paid for out of my pocket. I hated having to pay for everything; I’d make so much money and never get to spend it on little things I wanted. I was the kid who had to buy his ‘P.O.S’ car, pay for its gas, its checkups, its flat tires, its engine checks, and its insurance. Then of course there were all those cell phone bills and school lunches every day. It seemed like I was paying for just about everything. I wasn’t mad or bitter though, in fact I was fine with everything. I’m just glad I had breakfast, dinner and a roof over my head at night. I have to keep in mind that there are kids out there who have it just as “bad” -I guess you could say- as I do. And there is definitely no doubt that there are kids out there who have it twenty times worse than what I have to actually get through every day: kids who have to dig through the trash to savor a meal of what they call “lunch”, kids who spend their nights in the basement of a church or a beaten up house with no heat or running water, kids who have to worry about getting jumped or shot when they walked to school. Yes, I take these kids, these heroes to mind every time that I feel like I don’t have enough money- and then I feel like the spoiled brat.
But growing up in this state of condition has given me a plethora of wisdom that’ll someday save me in the future: learning how to save money and spend it only on things you need, to pack lunch as much as possible without getting sick of pb+j , to stay away from fast food restaurants that eat holes in my wallet more than anything else, to ride my bike to work and school whenever possible, etc…. There of course will be times when I splurge my money, but you have to every now and then in order to stay sane. I take breaks from work and use the money I earn to reward myself. There will be times when I need to go see a movie, or I need to go have dinner with my friends, or I need to see Blink 182 in concert. But of course I keep track of how I spend and make sure not to exceed a limit.
I’m here at Virginia-Tech (as I’m sure everybody else is) for one reason and that is to ensure a stable future, let alone a successful one for the life ahead of me. And although I won’t ever make as much as Tiger Woods who according to Forbes.com makes 110 million dollars a year (that’s about $3.49 a second), just to hit a white ball 350 yards while wearing a hat with a Nike check mark on it, or Shaq who makes 35 million a year just to dunk a (for him) grape-fruit sized ball into a basket a foot and a half over his head, or Michael Jordan who gets paid 45 million dollars to wear a tagless Hanes T-shirt or have clips of him playing basketball 15 years ago on TV, or even A-Rod who signed a 275 million dollar 10-year contract with the Yankees in 2007; although I’ll never make as much as them, I’ll still make enough to live happily, and for now I’ll continue to work hard during the summer to pay for only a small fraction of my tuition and leave the rest to loans, grants and fate. I don’t have enough to pay for college right now but know someday after a lot of hard work and integrity, money won’t be the issue (at least for the most part).