I really wasn't sure how much money I had in the bank, and since I used the Russian roulette system of balancing my check book, I suspected the worst. My only hope was that there was enough money in my account to give me a little economic CPR to starve off poverty and the thumb collecting bill collectors for a week or two.   

  

Standing inside the bank lobby you are usually thinking about two things, how poor you are and how to rob the bank.  My bank knew this, and placed around the lobby little subtle reminders that robbing them was not a good idea.

 

Take for instance a large stain of red in front of the vault with a huge burly guard toting a shotgun standing right next to it.  If that sight didn’t=t deter you then there was an old poster on the wall with a picture of the corpse of John Dillinger lying on a slab with a caption that read: ADon’t even think about it!@          

 

Bing!  The little bell went off and I walked up to the teller cage to collect my just rewards for a lifetime of hard work.  The thing that worried me was that I had not worked that hard and my just reward might reflect that. 

 

I told the teller that I wanted to withdraw everything in my account.  Being that I wasn't Donald Trump, I was forced to produce eight forms of ID before the teller verified who I was.  When you're poor, nobody trusts you, have you ever noticed that?

 

After what seemed like an hour the teller finally came back to the window carrying a small stack of bills in his hands.  Let them be hundreds, I prayed. In spite of knowing better, I found myself getting excited about the prospect of having all this money and I was already thinking about where to spend it once I got it into my greedy little paws. 

 

This fantasy quickly dissipated as I realized that the small stack of bills the teller was counting out was twenties, not hundreds.  I was devastated.  My total net worth was $250.41.  All that I had in the world was sitting in front of me in this pathetic little pile of green bills that would barely cover half my rent. 

Momentarily lost in despair, I lost control of my bodily functions and let forth a truly revolting hot dog and coke flavored belch.  The teller's face turned green and she looked at me with disgust as she put her hands over her mouth and started to gag.  The security guard came rushing over and told me to take my money and to get the hell out on the street where I belonged with the rest of the pigs. The surge of hope that I had upon entering the bank had quickly turned into a whimper of frustration.

 

So much for a new start.  With the teller and the guard looking at me like I was a particularly loathsome back woods country f***, I scooped up my life earnings and with what was quickly becoming my trade mark, and skulked out the door to face my future with my pride in tatters, my dignity in shreds, and $250.41 to my name.

 

Every bill that I had was overdue.  I had bill collectors threatening to remove body parts in exchange for payment.  You know what it's like to owe $800 in rent when you only have $250 dollars in your life savings?  My only consolation was that I had the cash, and the bill collectors had the debt.  Thing's were once again looking pretty sh**ty.  With my life savings barley registering as a lump in my pocket, I sat down on a bench and tried to figure out where to go next.

 

My options were to commit a crime, which I had already done earlier in the day.  To throw myself in front of a BMW and hope that the injury would not be life threatening and worth the insurance pay off, or to work hard and save my money. 

 

The last option was no option, and the thought of getting run over by a car scared me out of it, and the committing a crime part was put out of my thoughts by recurring flash backs to the prison rape report I had watched on the Learning Channel. 

 

It was then, right at the moment when I was reconsidering the tossing myself in front of a car option that I received a sign from the gods.  Actually it was a sign painted on the back of a parked bus that read:  "Come to Atlantic City! “  Ah yes folks, there's good news tonight!

 

All at once it hit me.  Where else can schlubs like me combine desperation with a small amount of cash and come out a winner?  A trip to Atlantic City!  I would take my measly $250.41 and turn it into a fortune at the black jack tables.  What a great idea! I was about to embark on a crusade to save my ass at the place where I was most likely to loose it. 

 

Instead of coming up with a reasonable plan to make money, I had conjured up the most unreasonable way to get money.  But what else could I do?  I needed instant infusion of cash and I needed it now.