Category: JUST FOR FUN

The Reeking Lockbox and a Pause.

A Lesson in Odors and Moving Down the Road.

I opened the door to the hallway as I was leaving my condominium, and my nose was hit with an acrid, pungent, almost-burning-rubber stench.  The only new thing in the common area was a lockbox that was put on the door of a unit that was just put on the market.  I walked over to the lockbox, leaned over and took a whiff.  Yes, sure enough, that was the odorous stench!  The lockbox was covered in a rubber casing, so you can imagine the horrific burning rubber smell!

It made me feel queasy to the point of almost retching.  It got to a point where I could faintly smell it in my condominium, too.

 

This concludes my essays on former neighborhoods in which I lived, where neighbors, property managers, and situations were quirky, strange, and sometimes laughable.  My essays will henceforth focus more on simple living, reflections, lessons for a pious life, and humor.  My essays will resume here on Thursday, October 1, 2026.

 

 

2

Friends I Didn’t Know I Had.

A Lesson in Covetousness and Phoniness.

Every once in a while, we go all out for Chinese carry out.  We have a pretty good Chinese restaurant, The Happy Wok, right around the corner in our neighborhood.  So, once a week or so we order out:  an entrée with a spicy kick, maybe two eggrolls, fried rice, and a quart of soup.  Most of the time, they give us a good handful of fortune cookies, sometimes they forget.  This gives us a couple of times to sit down to a feast, since it’s a lot of food.

Well, one time we got a half dozen fortune cookies, so we opened two of them and read them aloud.  Best friend’s foresaw financial abundance:

Mine was about gaining a lifetime of meaningful connections:

I laughed, but good.  I quipped, “Well, we’re going to hit the motherlode at our silver mine, and when the word gets out, we’re going to have an abundance of devoted ‘friends and family’ coming out of the woodwork that we didn’t know existed.”

We both laughed, knowing it would be true.

 

1

The Sheriff of Decibels:  The Man Who Heard Too Much

A Lesson in Consideration.

I once wrote about the Sheriff of Decibels, a neighbor from a high‑rise condominium where keeping to oneself was the unofficial building policy.  Everyone did keep to themselves, and life was blissfully uneventful, until the night he, Mr. Wigg, called to inform me that my television was “too loud” and preventing him from sleeping.

Now, I had been living at that condominium for years; he was living there long before I showed up on the scene.  So, this was a surprise out of nowhere.

That phone call became the overture to a recurring performance, a kind of neighborhood opera in which he played both the aggrieved victim and the self‑appointed enforcer of silence.  After a few of these episodes, I began to wonder whether sound was truly traveling through the walls or whether he simply enjoyed the adrenaline rush of a well‑timed complaint.  After all, the room with my television didn’t even share a wall with his bedroom; it butted up against his butler’s pantry.  And I hadn’t turned on that television for months by this time.

The irony was rich: I could hear his television, too, but only when I passed his front door.  Talk shows, game shows, the full audio spectrum.  Yet it never occurred to me to call him and issue a noise citation.  I assumed he was just living his life, the way people do when they choose communal living over a cabin in the woods.

Then one afternoon, as I walked down the common hallway, his door cracked open an inch.  “Pssst!  I can hear sounds from your condo,” he whispered, as if delivering classified intelligence.

I turned to look through the sliver of darkness.  Only Mr. Wigg’s lips were visible, and the darkness behind him was black and infinite.  I told him flatly that nothing was playing and kept walking.  For a moment, I wondered if he stood in his butler’s pantry with a cup pressed to the wall, listening for enemy war plans.  The image made me laugh.

There’s a particular fatigue that comes from dealing with neighbors who are both hypersensitive and oblivious to their own habits.  It’s like being lectured on etiquette by someone chewing with their mouth open.  You could point it out, but it would never land.

I concluded that the issue lay not with me but with his imagination, or his hearing aids, or him pressing his ear against our common wall.  Who knows?  I kept living my life at a normal volume, unbothered.

Then one day, everything came to light.  When my best friend was walking down the hallway coming back from the garbage room, he bumped into Mr. Wigg.  The spoke awhile, and the true of this “noise” matter was discovered.  It appeared that we and Mr. Wigg have the same brand and model of television.  Through the wonders of modern technology, the sounds from our television come through his speakers.  We have heard his television sound come through our speakers, too.  And what about our television turning off by itself?  Well, it also is apparent that his remote and our remote affect the other’s sets.

Therefore, isn’t it better to find the source of a problem before claiming someone of malfeasance?  It could all be an innocent technology glitch.  Mr. Wigg wouldn’t have been aggravated, and I wouldn’t think of the situation as silly.

 

0

Number 7G – The Conclusion

One early morning, as Varina Pembroke-Sinclair stepped out of her condominium and into the hallway, an odd odor caught her nose.  She couldn’t quite identify it, for it was the most unusual and jarring odor she ever smelled in the hallway, and that was saying something at Cypress Row!  Sure, Miss Varina had a talent that proved she could pinpoint any of her neighbor’s aromas that emanated from their condominiums, but this stench in the hallway was something else altogether.

Varina shrugged her shoulders, put the key in her lock, secured it, and headed down the hall to the elevator.

The dank funk became a distinctive fusty skunk-like stench as she approached the elevator.  She turned her nose up into the air and gave a deep sniff.  It came from Number 7G, the closest condominium around the corner from the elevator.  The pungent odor clung to the air like an unwelcomed visitor.  The elevator bell chimed twice and the doors slid open.

Varina entered the elevator car.  She thought about 7G.  Not many people really knew the people who lived in 7G, and no one seemed to care enough to try, including Varina.  Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to the family than their infamous habits.  Rumors had swirled among the neighbors, whispers of strange visitors at odd hours, packages left at the door that were never retrieved, and the eerie glow of a flickering light that seemed to pulse through the windows late at night.    She shrugged her shoulders, took a deep breath, and rode the elevator down in silence.

As she exited the elevator on the ground floor, Varina welcomed the fresh, cool air with no smells, other than the Lysol used by the cleaning lady the evening before.

As Varina walked the long five blocks to work, she resolved to uncover the truth.  She wasn’t one for gossip, but something about 7G gnawed at her curiosity.  Besides, her curiosity seemed to always take precedent.

Over the next few weeks, the smell from 7G only grew worse.  It wasn’t just the musty, skunk-like odor anymore.  It now had an acrid edge, as if something was rotting.  Varina couldn’t stand it, yet no one else on the floor seemed to smell it.  Her curiosity turned into unease, then fear, as the stench began to invade her own condominium.

One night, unable to sleep, Varina decided to talk face-to-face with the family in 7G.  She steeled herself, grabbed her keys, and knocked on their door.  The sound echoed through the silent hallway, but there was no answer.  She knocked again, harder this time, the smell making her gag.

The door creaked open.

The apartment was dark.  A dim light bulb on a table flickered in the corner, casting weird shadows on the walls.  Varina stepped inside, calling out tentatively.  The air was oppressive, heavy with the sickly odor, and the silence was deafening.

As she moved further into the apartment, her foot caught on something.  She looked down and gasped.  Strewn across the floor were piles of ashes, remnants of burned paper, clothes, and belongings.  The flickering light came from a makeshift altar, surrounded by melted candles and strange symbols etched into the walls.

And then she saw them.

The family sat on chairs in a circle, motionless.  Their eyes were wide open, staring at nothing, their bodies slumped as if drained of life.  Varina’s scream stuck in her throat as she realized they weren’t breathing.  Whatever had happened in 7G was far beyond anything she could comprehend.

She stumbled backward, fleeing the apartment, and called the police.  When they arrived, the family was gone along with every trace of the altar.  The room was empty, except for a lingering smell and the faint hum of an unseen presence.  Varina thought she lost her mind.  So did the police, and they left, laughing hysterically.

For weeks afterward, Varina couldn’t sleep.  The police dismissed her story as nonsense, chalking it up to old-fashioned hysteria.  But she knew better.  Something unnatural had taken root in 7G, and she feared it hadn’t left.

In time, the building returned to its routines, and the neighbors forgot the brief commotion around 7G.  Yet Varina knew the quiet was only a disguise.  Some nights, long after midnight, a thin ribbon of that same fetid odor would snake beneath her door, as if reminding her that what she witnessed had not ended; only shifted.  The door to 7G remained shut, its crooked numbers unchanged, yet she sometimes heard a soft rustling inside, like chairs being moved or someone rising slowly from a long, unnatural sleep.  And though she told no one, Varina felt certain the family had never truly left.  Something had been awakened in that condominium, something patient, something watchful, and it was only a matter of time before it sought her out and her sanity again.

The months passed in a strange, uneasy blur for Varina Pembroke‑Sinclair.  Though she tried to resume her routines with her morning walks, her evening chamomile tea, her habit of identifying neighbors by scent, something in her had shifted, and yet the building would not let her forget.

Then it subtly reemerged, that faint skunk‑rot odor drifting through the vents at dawn, a soft scratching behind her bedroom wall, a flicker of light beneath her door at 3:17 AM.

Varina told herself it was her imagination, or trauma, or even stress.  She told herself anything but the truth, but the truth had a way of insisting on its position.

One evening, as she returned home from work, she found a small envelope taped to her door.  No stamp nor handwriting.  Just a greasy smudge across the front.  She opened the envelope flap.  Inside was a single scrap of paper, torn from a notebook, with a message scrawled in pencil:

“YOU LEFT US.”

Varina’s breath caught, and she dropped the note as if it burned her fingers.  She forced herself to look down the hallway.  It was empty and silent.  She paused and sniffed the air.  The stench was there again, stronger than ever, curling around her like smoke.

She reported the strange note to the building superintendent, who chuckled and suggested teenagers were playing pranks.  But Varina knew better because teenagers didn’t smell like death.  So that night, she slept with the lights on.

The next morning, at 5:30 AM she woke to the sound of the elevator chiming on her floor.  She froze.  No one used the elevator this early.  She peeked out from her door and looked down the hallway.  A mist drifted around, thick and gray, carrying that unmistakable stink.  Varina backed away, heart pounding as the mist curled toward her, tendrils reaching, searching.

Then she saw four silhouettes in the hallway.  It was the family from 7G.  Their eyes glowed like dying embers.  Their mouths hung open, as if mid‑breath, mid‑scream, mid‑ritual.  They did not move nor blink.

Varina stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet back into her condo and slammed the door shut.  Her hands shook as she locked the deadbolt, then the chain.  The air was deathly silent.  Then came a knock on her door, soft, rhythmic, and patient.

Varina pressed her ear to the door.  A whisper seeped through the wood, thin and cold: “We never left.”

She screamed as the smell flooded under the door.

Varina eventually convinced herself to investigate 7G again, but this time with the building superintendent.  When they opened the door to 7G, the apartment was spotless, with fresh paint, new carpeting, and no symbols, ashes, or smells.  The superintendent excused himself to take a call on his cell phone and moved into another room.

A handyman appeared behind Varina and asked, “Oh, you’re the new tenant?”

Varina spun around and blinked.  “New tenant?  Huh?”

He nodded.  “Someone moved in last night.”

Varina’s stomach dropped.  She stepped into the apartment, scanning every corner, but it was empty.  Then she noticed the bedroom door was closed.  “Is someone in there?” she whispered.

The handyman shrugged. “Eh.  Probably the new guy.”

Varina reached for the knob, and the handyman grabbed her wrist hard.

“You shouldn’t open that,” he warned.  His voice had changed to a rougher and lower quality.

Varina looked up.  His eyes were wrong.  They were too dark and too deep.  Then that smell hit her again, that skunk‑rot, thick and suffocating with a hint of mildew.

The handyman leaned in close.  “We’ve been waiting for you,” he growled.  Behind him, the bedroom door creaked open and some thing stepped out.  The lights flickered.

From behind Varina, a voice whispered:  “Welcome home, Varina.  Welcome home, baby.”

Varina froze, every instinct screaming to run, yet her legs rooted to the floor as the shadows thickened around her.  The air pulsed slow and deliberate like the house itself was breathing.  And in that breathing, she understood, with a clarity that hollowed her out, that whatever waited here had not found her by accident.  It had called her back.  Every sin she committed passed before her eyes.

The lights went out, and she didn’t finish her scream before the darkness swallowed it.  Something demonic tore through her body, ripping away everything that made her her, until only an empty shriveled shell remained where her moist, plump, and life-filled body had been.

And in the darkness, the building exhaled, as demons wont.

 

0

Stench in the Shadows.

In the condominium association where I lived once upon a time, there was a strange occurrence that only a brave resident could resolve.  This is the true story.

The overstuffed garbage bags appeared twice weekly in the broom closet on the fifth floor of the condominium building.

What brought this to the attention of the residents was the overpowering stench of rotting foods in the bags.

On a Saturday morning, Miss Wanda, the bravest of the fifth-floor residents, had enough of the reek and marched to the broom closet.  Several residents followed her, for they wanted to be in on the revelation.  Wanda opened the door, and there it was: an overstuffed Hefty® bag emitting a stench that would knock a skunk off his beam.

Wanda took one of the bags and opened it up.  Everyone around her jumped back and held their noses.

“It smells like death,” Old Man Fontane gasped.  “Death on a plate of rotted sardines.”

“At least!” gagged Issac Brenner.  “It smells worse than my ex-wife’s armpits after a sweaty walk in the park.  I’d know that stench anywhere.  Barf!”

“Hoo-eee, Lordy!”  Mrs. Chisa Cooke walked away while holding her nose.  “Y’all enjoy.  I’m headed off to watch Julia reruns on my brand new television.”

Bravely, Miss Wanda dug into the garbage bag.  Slimy beet greens, a moldly banana, empty cartons, and paper brochures from the Poconos greeted her.  She dug around until she saw an envelope.  She reached for it with two fingers.

“Ah!  Well.”  She examined the address.  “Ah ha!  It’s from that brood across the hall from me.  I’ll talk to them.”  The neighbors nodded their heads and a few just whispered, “Ooo!” and “Yeah.”

Miss Wanda knocked on the Stankles’ door.  After talking with the grandmama, neighbors could hear the two women laughing before Miss Wanda returned to her condominium.

“So who did it?” Mrs. Chisa Cooke asked the next day in the laundry room.

“Oh, it was her youngest grandbaby, Tristane.  Do you know that ten-year-old is afraid of the dark, so he just tosses the garbage bags in the broom closet and runs back home!  His parents never check to see if the boy is doin’ his errands right.””

 

 

0

Number 7G.

A strange occurrence happened at the Cypress Row Condominiums many years ago.

One early morning, as Varina Pembroke-Sinclair stepped out of her condominium and into the hallway, an odd odor caught her nose.  She couldn’t quite identify it, for it was the most unusual and jarring odor she ever smelled in the hallway, and that was saying something at Cypress Row!  Sure, Miss Varina had a talent that proved she could pinpoint any of her neighbor’s aromas emanated from their condominiums, from the pot of oxtail soup simmering to the sharp tang of a newly opened crock pot filled to the brim with kimchee, and even the West Coast vineyard of a just-uncorked pinot noir.  But yet, this stench in the hallway was something else altogether.

Varina shrugged her shoulders, put the key in her lock, secured it, and headed down the hall to the elevator.

As she approached the elevator, the dank funk became a distinctive fusty skunk-like stench.  She turned her nose up into the air and gave a deep sniff.  It came from Number 7G, the closest condominium around the corner from the elevator.  The pungent odor clung to the air like an unwelcomed visitor.  Varina wrinkled her nose as she pressed the elevator button.  The pungent smell clung to the air like an unwelcome guest.  She again glanced at the door to Number 7G, its chipped paint and crooked lettering giving it an air of neglect.  The family inside had always been a mystery to her; shadowy figures who rarely ventured out, their muffled laughter and occasional arguments seeping through the walls.

The elevator bell chimed twice and the doors slid open.

Varina entered the elevator car.  She thought about 7G.  Not many people really knew the people who lived in 7G, and no one seemed to care enough to try, including Varina.  She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to the family than their infamous habits.  Rumors had swirled among the neighbors—whispers of strange visitors at odd hours, packages left at the door that were never retrieved, and the eerie glow of a flickering light that seemed to pulse through the windows late at night.  .  She shrugged her shoulders, took a deep breath, and rode the elevator down in silence.

As she exited the elevator on the ground floor, Varina welcomed the fresh, cool air with no smells, other than the Lysol used by the cleaning lady the evening before.

As Varina walked the five blocks to work, she resolved to uncover the truth.  She wasn’t one for gossip, but something about 7G gnawed at her curiosity.  What secrets were hidden behind that door?  And why did the smell seem to grow stronger over time?

Over the next few weeks, the smell from 7G only grew worse.  It wasn’t just the musty, skunk-like odor anymore.  It now had an acrid edge, as if something was rotting.  Varina couldn’t stand it, yet no one else on the floor seemed to smell it.  Her curiosity turned into unease, then fear, as the stench began to invade her own condominium.

One night, unable to sleep, Varina decided to talk face-to-face with the family in 7G.  She steeled herself, grabbed her keys, and knocked on their door.  The sound echoed through the silent hallway, but there was no answer.  She knocked again, harder this time, the smell making her gag.

The door creaked open.

The apartment was dark.  A dim light bulb on a table flickered in the corner, casting weird shadows on the walls.  Varina stepped inside, calling out tentatively.  The air was oppressive, heavy with the sickly odor, and the silence was deafening.

As she moved further into the apartment, her foot caught on something.  She looked down and gasped.  Strewn across the floor were piles of ashes, remnants of burned paper, clothes, and belongings.  The flickering light came from a makeshift altar, surrounded by melted candles and strange symbols etched into the walls.

And then she saw them.

The family sat on chairs in a circle, motionless.  Their eyes were wide open, staring at nothing, their bodies slumped as if drained of life.  Varina’s scream stuck in her throat as she realized they weren’t breathing.  Whatever had happened in 7G was far beyond anything she could comprehend.

She stumbled backward, fleeing the apartment, and called the police.  When they arrived, the family was gone along with every trace of the altar.  The room was empty, except for a lingering smell and the faint hum of an unseen presence.  Varina thought she lost her mind.  So did the police, and they left, laughing.

For weeks afterward, Varina couldn’t sleep.  The police dismissed her story as nonsense, chalking it up to old-fashioned hysteria.  But she knew better.  Something unnatural had taken root in 7G, and she feared it hadn’t left.

In the months that followed, Varina Pembroke-Sinclair carried the memory of 7G like a stone in her pocket; heavy, cold, impossible to ignore.  In time, the building returned to its routines, and the neighbors forgot the brief commotion around 7G.  Yet Varina knew the quiet was only a disguise.  Some nights, long after midnight, a thin ribbon of that same fetid odor would snake beneath her door, as if reminding her that what she witnessed had not ended; only shifted.  The door to 7G remained shut, its crooked numbers unchanged, yet she sometimes heard a soft rustling inside, like chairs being moved or someone rising slowly from a long, unnatural sleep.  And though she told no one, Varina felt certain the family had never truly left.  Something had been awakened in that condominium, something patient, something watchful, and it was only a matter of time before it sought her out and her sanity again at Cypress Row Condominiums.

The conclusion to this story is published on June 13, 2026.

 

 

0

The Quiet Edges.

There was once a resident in a condominium I owned, a man so enigmatic that no one ever quite claimed to know him.  He drifted through the halls like a rumor made flesh, and before long he became the quiet talk of the association.  Here’s the story:

He kept to himself, and barely anyone knew his name.  It was said that Alonzo’s jet black, laid down styled hair shone so bright it might have lit up all of Sage Pointe.  His hair was a shimmering emblem of confidence and unspoken connection.

“Alonzo,” those who knew his name would say, “He got the thickest, the baddest, the most outta-sight edges this side of Sage Pointe.”

“Alonzo?  Ain’t he the one with the black patent leather hair?”

“Shiny and bright, that Alonzo is.”

I know that Alonzo’s secret was SoftSheen Dark and Natural in “Jet Black.”  I’ve seen the box he threw out in the recycling bin.  His “secret” might have looked unnatural as vinyl patent leather shoes, but he had not one grey hair on his head.  It was a one-tone black from the back of his head to the slicked down edges in the front, from sideburn to sideburn.

As time passed, Alonzo’s hair became more than just a spectacle; it turned into a beacon of curiosity and a source of fascination at Sage Pointe.  People were in awe about him at the monthly condominium association meetings – the few times he bothered to show up.  They marveled at him in the church, drooled at him in the grocery store line, admired him at the barbershop, and speculated about his unknown secrets at the local diner.  Yet Alonzo carried on, keeping to himself, his glossy raven hair unfaltering, like a strange moon in its perennial glow.

But one summer evening, at the annual Sage Pointe party, Alonzo broke his silence.  He sauntered onto the wooden dance floor at the activity center with his head held high, dressed sharp as a razor in a cream‑colored linen suit that caught the breeze just so, a narrow burgundy tie tucked neatly against a crisp pale yellow shirt, and red shoes polished to a mirror shine.  The flashing dance lights cast dazzling reflections off both his raven‑black hair and the blinding shine of his shoes.  Eight gold rings gleamed on his fingers — thick, heavy bands with diamonds, emeralds, and garnets that flashed each time his hands cut through the air, catching the lights as surely as his raven‑black hair.  He moved with an easy, unhurried confidence, swaying to the beat of funk music like he had been born for that moment.

Earlier that evening, I watched as he stood off to the side of the party room sampling the appetizers— deviled eggs dusted with paprika, tiny ham biscuits, and those colorful cellophane-tipped toothpicks that skewered a variety of cheese cubes that squeaked when you bit into them.  He washed it all down with two strawberry daiquiris so cold that the condensation rolled down the red plastic Solo® cup like sweat on a July window.  He sipped them slow, savoring each icy, syrup‑sweet mouthful as though it were part of some private ritual that he wanted no one else to be a part of.

I watched him in awe along with the crowd and laughed when Alonzo pulled a small group of kids into his groove.  “It’s all in the soul, you crumb crunchers!  Dance like your hair shines brighter than the stars,” he declared, a wide smile breaking through his elusive façade.  That night, he wasn’t the enigma they had speculated about.  He was the rhythm, the light, the joy.

That is what everyone wanted to believe.

By the time the party was over, it was said that Alonzo’s edges shone so bright it might have lit up all of Sage Pointe.  After the party, although he disappeared into the quiet mystery of his condominium once again, his name would be remembered as the man who brought the condominium association an evening they would never forget.

But in the weeks and months that followed, people began to notice something strange: no one saw Alonzo at church, or in the grocery line, or even passing by the barbershop window.  His apartment blinds stayed drawn, his mailbox appeared untouched.  Some said he’d moved away; others whispered he’d simply slipped into the night the way he’d always lived— quietly, without explanation.  His silver car would be in his parking spot, and sometimes not.  His monthly assessments still were paid in full and on time.  But no one actually saw him.

Now on certain humid evenings, when the streetlights flicker and the cicadas fall silent, a few swear they’ve seen a glint, just a brief flash, like moonlight on patent leather, disappearing around the corner before they can call his name.  And in Sage Pointe, that is enough to keep the legend alive.

In time, the condominium association learned to stop asking where Alonzo had gone.  Life in Sage Pointe moved on, as it always does, yet something in the air felt slightly altered, as though a faint shimmer had been left behind.  The wooden dance floor where he’d once spun the children around seemed to hold a deeper polish, catching the light in ways no one could quite explain.  And every so often, when the dusk settled low and the streetlamps hummed to life, someone would pause mid‑stride, certain they’d caught the scent of pomade or felt the whisper of a beat only Alonzo could hear.  Whether he had slipped away to some quieter corner of the world or simply stepped into the shadows he’d always belonged to, no one could say.  But the memory of that night, and the man whose hair shone like a secret, lingered in Sage Pointe like a story half‑told, waiting forever for the rest of its truth to surface.

 

 

0

When the Hallways Talk.

A short story from the past.

For hours, JeVaughn Willard sat in his recliner, frowning at the sporadic thuds and rolling rumbles echoing through the Sage Pointe Condominium building.  He took another puff of his Kools and listened hard.  The sounds came and went with no discernible pattern, bouncing off the walls and rattling his nerves.  He strained his ears, trying to pinpoint the source, but the building’s acoustics made it maddeningly elusive.  He slid out of his recliner and ambled over to the picture window.  He pushed aside the slats of the Venetian blinds and was glad he was not in the howling thunderstorm.  JeVaughn returned to his recliner.

As the clock struck eight, he took a break from reading his latest mystery novel.  His overflowing garbage bin finally gave him a reason to investigate the noise in the hallway.  He grabbed the bag and shuffled out into the dimly lit hallway, trying to keep his ragged brown corduroy slippers from flying off of his feet.  The carpet muffled his footsteps, but the strange racket had grown louder.  Then, as he rounded a corner, the mystery revealed itself.

Two neighborhood kids, the brood of the Reverand and Mrs. Stankle, were tearing up and down the long corridor, kicking a slightly deflated soccer ball between their feet.

Bam!  The ball slammed against a wall, leaving a faint smudge before careening into the air.

Thud!  The ball rebounded off the ceiling, narrowly missing a flickering light sconce as it came down.

JeVaughn Willard sighed, the corners of his mouth twitching with restrained annoyance.  He trudged to the garbage chute and let the bag drop with a hollow clang, watching it disappear into the void.

“Pointless,” he muttered under his breath, sparing one last glance at the kids.  They laughed and shouted, blissfully unaware of their disruptive echoes.

JeVaughn tightened his terry cloth robe and shuffled back to his door.  “No use mentioning it to their parents,” he thought grimly.  “The reverend’s sermons are loud enough.  I don’t need him aiming one at me!”

0

On Winning the Lottery.

I sometimes wonder what I would do if I suddenly won the lottery, not in the frantic, daydreaming way people often imagine, but in a quieter, more interior sense.  What would it reveal about me?  What would it change, and what would it leave untouched?

The answer, I’ve realized, depends less on the amount and more on the person receiving it.  A small windfall would be a pleasant gift for my husband, perhaps a chance to take a trip I’ve dreamed about for years.  But a larger sum such as hundreds of thousands, even millions, in fact, invites deeper reflection.  It asks who I am beneath the surface of daily routines and practical decisions.

If such a blessing ever came my way, my first instinct would be to give.  I would write a check to my parish, trusting that the funds would be used where the need is greatest.  I would finally visit the old country, reconnecting with my family there, and eventually stepping into the pilgrimage sites that shaped my imagination long before adulthood did.  I would sell my current home and settle into a condominium in a quieter corner of the state, close to a traditional Catholic parish where the Latin Mass still rises like the beautifully fragrant incense from another century.

But beyond those changes, I know myself well enough to see what would remain the same.  Wealth would not tempt me into reinvention.  I wouldn’t adopt a grand accent or cultivate airs.  I wouldn’t trade smoked chubbs or oxtails for some curated, fashionable palate.  I wouldn’t suddenly require a staff to manage my life.  I would keep my one car until it sighed its last breath.  I would continue wearing the clothes I already own, cooking the meals I already enjoy, and living with the same simplicity that has always grounded me.  The only indulgence I’d allow is hiring painters for the new place—because some chores lose their charm with age.  I’ve done enough painting and redecorating in my life.

Reflecting on this, I see that my imagined choices with lottery money mirror the choices I already make with my current income.  In fact, our relationship with money is rarely transformed by the number of zeros in our bank account.  Instead, it reveals itself in how we think, what we value, and what we believe we need to feel whole.

Financial psychologists speak of “money personalities”—the Spender, the Skeptic, the Saver-Investor.  These categories are not cages; they are mirrors.  They reflect the habits shaped by our upbringing, our culture, our mistakes, and our growth.  And like all aspects of the self, they can evolve.  A windfall might awaken generosity, anxiety, or discipline.  It might even amplify who we already are or nudge us toward who we hope to become.

In the end, imagining a lottery win is less about money and more about character.  It invites us to ask what we truly desire, what we fear, and what we believe will bring us peace.  For me, the answer is surprisingly simple:  I don’t need more “things.”  I need meaning, connection, beauty, sacrifice, and faith.  And those, thankfully, are not purchased with winnings but cultivated in the quiet choices of my everyday life.

Winning the lottery isn’t reality, but it is a little fun to banter about what I would do with an amount of money I can’t comprehend.  No harm in having some fun with the idea, though.

 

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