America the Poor: A Wanderers Tale, Vol Two

Chapter 24: My True Education starts,and my distractions

As the days passed, we had access to only a few limited activities to pass the neverending amount of time. Showering was not just to get clean, but to help the day go by. I realized I might be there for a very long time, so I finally decided to start participating in board games and various other things to do, if only to break the monotony of the days and hours passing too damned slowly. I started with monopoly.,which I had never played before. It wasn't something taught in Buffalo public schools obviously, and not something Joseph and I ever wasted a single moment on, so to me it was a new thing. All board games in general were something I never really experienced up to this point in my young life. I was a newbie to them, but not to common sense, or thinking ahead.

Monopoly is a strange game, and I always chose the pitiful shoe as my representative; Symbolically the very bottom of the barrel, and with the theoretical ability to kick my opponents in the ass as I had kicked my brother Joseph in the butt for losing against me in that forgery bet long ago. And yet a strangely symbolically powerful piece, to my way of thinking. In every last game of Monopoly I would ever play, I would choose this as my avatar.

Being in the lowest of the low in society, as I was all my life, I loved the shoe, and loved the idea of the underdog, as I always would. It represented my low status, and I tried to be honest in all my endeavours, as was my nature. Everything I ever did, I usually had actual reasons for doing them, no matter how minor they were. As I played, I found I wasnt a fan of the actual gameplay. Up to that point in my sad life I had not dealt that much with the brutal reality of capitalism.

Mainly I paid for and used the buses to only visit Joseph and Carol, relying on the generosity of my grandparents, as my monstrous mother had never given me a single dime to ever spend while I lived with her. To this very point in my life, capitalism was a mere vague concept, but not something I really knew or fully comprehended. It was a general idea, nothing more to my young mind, not then at least.

I tried to play the game fairly, and always ended up losing, bankrupt and homeless, pretty damned quickly, according to the dictates of fickle chance, just as in real life . It seemed amazingly unfair, and watching them play from a distance, strangely enough the chosen banker was the final winner nine times out of ten.

Mere chance you say? I don't believe that. Some things we merely suspect, and ever fewer things we know for sure. The fact the bankers usually cheated, this was something I knew.

Smart cheaters almost always prosper, in monopoly and also in actual life. Good cheaters get away with this, and never get caught, and end up getting promoted, and often even elected. Bad failed cheaters become lousy social workers and/or prisoners. Sometimes both. That's the reality of modern life. Dishonesty often gets them ahead, and honest players end up homeless and destitute.

Welcome to the sad reality of this twisted timeline, and possibly the nature of all of mankind. It's a moral crime, yet it's absolutely practical truth here, and many subscribe to it. Cheaters, when successful, do quite well, and often end up leading our society.

They may be morally bankrupt, but what do they really care, and why would they? They win the game, they prosper, multiply, and thrive on their own moral bankruptcy. In real life, young idiots usually become grown idiots. When they prosper from their misdeeds, they will continue their wayward ways, all their lives. They learn from their easy successes. However I learned from my lifelong failures. Wisdom doesn't ever come easy, and it usually comes with the hardest lessons. Often the successful in our society don't possess wisdom, because they don't really need it. They casually had easy and corrupt successes, and need no wisdom to sustain themselves or thrive, they have won this life I suppose.