Scheming has been in my blood since i was a kid. Born with it i guess. My first scheme came about accidentally when i was 12 years old sitting at home on a Saturday morning watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon which had rudely taken the place of Captain Caveman and the Scooby Doo Olympics. "ya can't let life wait for you son, go out there and get it, stake your claim" my dad would say that at least once a day, every day. I guess that Saturday morning i somehow took it to heart.
My actual first idea was indeed sincere. I was watching the show and saw the telephones ringing off the hook and it just clicked at how easy it was for him to talk and people to phone in their money. It was incredible. I started getting that itchy feeling in my fingers that makes me rub my fingers back and forth like a daily double winner at the racetrack. Except now for whatever reason i make the same motion but on the sides of my head above my ears when i get overexcited about something.
It's not a back and forth motion either, it's an up and down motion starting from above my ear lobe and twitching up and down towards the top of my head and back. So essentially the same motion my fingers used to make when i did it with my index finger and thumb, thus it has to be the same nervous twitch just somehow misplaced to my scalp.
As a side note, this nervous twitch may prevent hair turning grey as i'm almost 50 and have no signs of losing my hair colour yet. I may have to start twitching on my pubic hair to keep my junk looking young down there.
So there i am pacing around the living room thinking how can i get somebody to call me and send me money. I'm not Jerry Lewis after all i'm just a 12 year old kid sitting at home pissed off about missing cartoons.
A ha!
Nothing's keeping me at home so i might as well go out. I, as did every kid back then, had the Saturday morning tv guide memorized for cartoons. I knew if i left right away i could be back in an hour for The Blue Falcon The truly crappy cartoons started either before 7am or after 11, but i had to get my fix of something and i supposed i could stomach some Dino Mutt action. But first, try to get some money.
Out i went, and immediately recognized how horribly unprofessional i'd be appearing in a Darryl Sittler Team Canada jersey that i had slept in and my baseball team pants which i had put on ready for my afternoon game.
Also, i knew i needed a clipboard for some reason. Jerry Lewis had one so why not me.
I was dressed like i was going to a wedding after 2 short minutes and 5 minutes after i had walked safely out of range of any neighbour who would tell my dad .. i knocked on my first door.
"hi i'm watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon on Cable 10 and i'd like to support one of the kids please, could you chip in 5c to help?"
Always ask for much lower than what you really want. Asking for 5 cents got me 5 dollars and my legs were truly shaking as i walked away putting the money in a manilla envelope my dad always brought home from the Post Office where he worked.
An hour later i had $100, easy as pie. My idea was to march right on home and phone that pledge in as soon as i got in the door. Ya that idea lasted a good 10 seconds. What excited me more was the convenience store behind my street as i finally had some serious cash to do some major damage in there.
Most 12 year old kids if i had to venture a guess would dive into $100 of candy. For me it was straight to the lottery tickets. Not just any lottery either, i wanted these new baseball scratch and win lottery tickets for $2 so i bought 50 of them. Little did i know that one day in the future i would be buying 50,000 in one shot, but hey, buy in bulk, i learned that from my dad buying boxes of Spam if it was on sale for a penny.
I had Spam so much as a kid i actually acquired a taste for it so long as it was thoroughly drowned in French's Yellow Mustard.
The lottery ticket had 9 innings of scratch-able circles, 18 in total for both the visiting team (gov't lottery) and the home team (me) which is why it was so alluring to me as a kid. I was getting a lot of scratch for my buck, or err two bucks.
Anyways other than i think 1 or 2 free tickets, which in itself justified completely spending the $100, i won absolutely no money, but i kept the losing tickets anyways as something to look at while i ate some Super Sugar Crisps and turned on some Blue Falcon action.
It wasn't until i was doing my homework after the baseball game ( i threw 3 innings of no hit ball against the Braves and actually struck out Michael Collis the home run king ... that's why i never forget that game to this day) in my study room ... or sleeping room ... or pass the time carving ideas out of my brain room as my dad made me do an hour a day in there without exception.
How it went down was something like ... i was doing my typewriting lessons and made a mistake. So grabbing the liquid paper i blotted out the typed 9 instead of the intended 'O' key and it hit me like a truck. DANG ... the liquid paper covers the 9. I blew on it and tried to scratch it off but did so too early, it smeared the paper. So i tried again. Made another typo, lp'd it up and marched around the confined space doing that finger twitch thing again. Five minutes later i scratched and sure enough .. the liquid paper came off revealing the 9 sitting there nice and pretty.
Can you say home made baseball lottery tickets anyone?
"Craiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig , come have dinner" my dad would always hang on the ai part of my name forever making it sound like a wailing foghorn. Damn i hated that. Point is, that was Saturday afternoon ok. I entered the room at 4pm, and he was calling me for dinner at 8, or somewhere around there. Just having a dad around the house growing up dinner wasn't exactly on time. Dad followed a man's timetable called the Shakira timetable ... "whatever, whenever". Four hours spent non stop of feverishly making up lottery cards, or to be more specific, losing lottery cards... and on a saturday afternoon! I made them on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of normal white paper and meticulously make the circles in exactly the same place on every card all the same size. Then i just did the scores in pen so as to be sure they couldn't be erased, covered it up with lp, cut the paper so they were all the same size and Voila!...instant money.
At school on Monday i was hoping to have 'upto' 10 people buy my tickets as i was selling them for 10 cents each which in the day was quite a lot of money. You could buy 3 pop rocks candies for that much so getting those kids to part with that much money ... well let's just say i was doubtful.
Ah but never underestimate the power of "upto". By the end of lunch i had completely sold out all my tickets, all 50 of them. This time i kept the $5, bought some more liquid paper so it would blot on the paper faster since the one i had used on Saturday was so old, and Monday night was all about my introduction to the world of mass production.
"you still doing homework in there?" my dad knocked about 5 times on the door. At 11pm he had to go work the night shift at the post office so he put me to bed before he left. 1 minute after he was out the door i was right back in the counterfeit shop ...err ... my study room. I made 500 of the money makers that night and i forget exactly what time it was when i finally slept but it was damn near morning.
It didn't matter, i felt not even the slightest bit tired as i remember sprinting to school to try and get some before school easy money. It worked. By the time the morning bell rang i had converted liquid paper to $5, fan...tastic.
By lunch I had $10, well on the way to the $50 i had hoped for.
By afternoon recess i had a problem.
This big nut job, for the life of me i can't remember his name as he never did stand out in my mind as a bully to remember, but he was one of the school bullies nonetheless and he he was after me. At first i thought it was to rob me of my $10. But being dimwitted and short sighted as all non schemer's are, he was holding out his hand asking for $1.
"how, why" were the two words that could get me punched.
"because i won 7-4 look, you owe me $1" (he had changed his 1 into a 7 in pen) like right out of a bully comic book if one such thing did indeed exist. Complete with the bully push to the chest. Now my son knows the Gracie Jiu Jitsu "jolt you out of your skeleton" jiu jitsu reply for such a shove but in my days of Bruce Lee 1 vs 50 = ok training tips, i had no such reply ready. I only had 2 more words which got me in a whole lot of trouble ...
"not possible"
"why not?"
Followed by my next 3 words which sealed the deal as far as inviting physical punishment goes ...
"you can't win"
True, i designed all 500 cards to lose. Why give up a perentage of the winnings? would be the adult greedy answer as to why i designed all 500 to fail. While the real reason was, what if the first person by chance won a $1 ticket, how would i pay him? I couldn't. I had to guarantee money in my pocket for Monday first, and then i could escalate the payout side of the business on Tuesday or Wednesday.
That was the plan. Interrupted by a left hook to the stomach. Nobody punched the liver back then, it was all stomach shots. Because Bruce Lee had this stomach shot that would send people flying and every fight i saw or had as a kid, i could guarantee that given the opportunity somebody would be doing tiger claw style punch to the abs.
A fight ensued, or a mauling really. After being broken up we were hauled to the principal's office where we had to explain our actions.
"Come again? What lottery ticket, let me see it" ... that's the bewildered babbling of my principal getting introduced to my world of schemes. He was none to impressed. But he should have been, no? Come on, what 12 year old ever made lottery cards in school? Did he never see the movie Risky Business? My name is Joel Goodson. I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over $115 in 2 days at school at age 12. Time of your life, huh kid? (Risky Business 1983)
"Bugger it all anyways" my dad would say, as did i when i had my $15 confiscated. Idiot principal being all righteous on me to "teach me a lesson" ... i'd bet $15 more he spent my money on porn that night.
Oh well, sometimes you just have to say "what the fuck".
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