Better Good Than Money

The rich are not necessarily bad nor are the poor necessarily good; these are preconceptions that have been taught to us through folklore and fairy tales. Money does not define a person, but their heart and thoughts.

Bob Wurm was an extremely bitter man. He had spent thirty-nine years of his life working in a variety of demanding manual labour jobs, mainly kitchen, warehouse and janitor work. Now and then, he would take time off work, if not for getting laid off for incompetence, and live for months at a time on unemployment benefit. He lived in one of the poorer neighbourhoods in his city; a working class area which was populated by society's rejects: prostitutes, drug dealers, the insane, crack junkies and those who lived below the poverty line.

He lived in a small cramped single room in a shared house with eleven other occupants. Each room was as basic as it could get, unfurnished with only a mattress as a bare minimum and a hotplate for cooking on. The toilet and shower was located in a wooden hut in the back garden.

Bob did fairly well for himself considering his low wages which most would go towards paying taxes and the remainder towards food and luxuries such as cigarettes and beer. He would buy the cheapest beer and the most foul tasting tobacco. He furnished his own room with found items, mostly discarded furniture from the neighbourhood; he loved to collect and reuse, so his room was packed with secondhand items. Whenever he went out, whether on the way to work or just meandering along the streets, he'd keep his eyes open for free things.

There were so many things that Bob wanted. He wanted a cooker, for he was fed up of cooking on a hotplate. He wanted a microwave oven. He wanted a widescreen television. He wanted a surround sound speaker system. Of course, he would never find these items to take for free, yet he would never want to spend or save any money to buy these. It was for this reason that Bob envied and despised the rich, he would often call the rich, 'spoilt fools' and spit everytime he used the word 'rich'. 'It's better to be poor!' he would often tell his friends, 'I am happy being poor, because poor people look out for each other unlike the rich.'

One Sunday morning, which Bob had free; he was eating a tin of cheap baked beens while sitting on a found chair in the front garden of the house; he didn't know how to cook so he would usually just eat beans. He spied a large limousine parked along the street and began swearing, 'YOU FUCKING RICH CUNT! HOW DARE YOU PARK THAT FUCKING CAR IN THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD AND FLAUNT YOUR MONEY!' He stood up and waved his can of no brand beans at the car, 'See this! this is the shit I have to eat everyday! While you guys are enjoying your nice foods, I have to eat this crap!' and he threw the tin of beans at the vehicle but missed by several feet; the remainder of it's contents spilled onto the street. He went back inside, the sight of the expensive limousine was making him feel ill.

On the way back to his room along the hallway, he passed Joseph's room, which was once a part of the front room, and decided to bang on the door. 'Wake up Joe, wake up!' he shouted, he knew that Joseph would still be asleep since he worked the night shift as a barman on Saturday night. A few minutes later, the door opened, a groggy looking man in his early twenties stood there, eyelids half shut and brows struggling to keep them open.
'What do you want Bob?' slurred Joseph sleepily.
'Have you seen the fucking abomination parked outside Joseph?'
'Oh yeah, didn't you read the article in the newspaper?'
'I don't read fucking newspapers, they're full of shit.' spat Bob.
'Yeah, the multi-billionaire dude, Will Tate, who owns MegaSoft is dying of cancer, he's giving five million dollars to a poor person who deserves it from his home city; it's his "final good deed" before he dies.'
'He's here?' said Bob excitedly.
'No, he's sending out people to parts of the city, over a two month period, to look for someone who might be worthy of the donation.'
Bob smiled, and couldn't stop smiling, the grin pulled his face into an expression that he hadn't made since his childhood.

Bob went back to his room and gently closed the door, he giggled to himself and rubbed his dirty, blackened hands together. He couldn't help smiling, and he began to organize the contents of his room.

Over the next few weeks, Bob Wurm was seen giving away objects from his collection of found items to the neighbours. These gifts comprised of lamps, chairs, sets of plates, teapots and other functional household things. He gave the old lady, Mrs. Gray, a worn Persian rug that he had recovered from a dumpster. He offered a set of baseball cards, although of no collectors' value, to the young son of a mother who worked as a waitress in the local diner. He made sure that he wouldn't be employed during this time of his charity. It hurt him to give away these items, especially since he had spent most of his lifetime acquiring them, but he knew that it was the 'right thing' to do, for him anyway.

Oneday, there was knocking on Jim Stewart's door. A couple of well dressed gentlemen in three piece suits greeted him when he answered it. Jim looked over the shoulders of the men, and noticed a limousine parked outside; he smiled at the men for he knew why they were here; in other circumstances he would have been suspicious of anyone else who went to his house.
'Greetings sir!' said one of the men, the taller of the two.
'Hello sir!' replied Jim humbly as he had grown accustomed to behave as the door keeper of a local hotel.
'Jim Stewart?'
'Yes, that's me...' said Jim anxiously.
'We'd like to ask you a couple of questions...'
Jim nodded, 'Yes.. yes..'
'What do you think of Bob Wurm?'

Joseph sighed as he opened the wooden door to the toilet; there were urine and diarrhea stains on the seat, again. He knew full well that the person responsible for the mess was Bob because Bob was the only person that lived in the house who never cleaned up after himself; Bob also suffered from constipation and diarrhea because of his poor diet. The man had also used up all the toilet paper and hadn't refilled it, he never topped up the paper; when people asked him to buy more paper, he would say, 'I'm really sorry, I'm out of cash, I'll get it next time,' as he drank cheap beer from a six pack that he bought earlier that day. There were also cigarette butts all over the toilet floor, nobody else smoked in the house, he wouldn't pick them up either; the toilet seat was also pock marked with cigarette butt burns.

One evening, Bob had invited all the members of the household to his room. It was a tight squeeze, and some were forced to stand in the hallway. Bob had managed to save up a couple of welfare cheques to buy beer and some snacks for everyone. He told those in attendance about how the committee dedicated to selecting a receiver for the five million dollars have chosen Bob as a prime candidate; he then kindly asked his housemates if they would drop him a good word, and to reward them should he win, he would split the money twelve ways between all of them, so they would all end up being 'winners'. They agreed to Bob's plan, and they all toasted towards their probable future good fortune.

Two weeks later, the end of the two month search, the committee announced, on radio, the winner of the search for the most deserving city dweller for the prize money. 'After much deliberation, and research,' they said, 'we've found that the most deserved person of this large sum of money is,' they paused dramatically as a sample of drums rolling played, 'Bob Wurm!'

Days later, there was an official presentation in the city square, where Bob received the cheque for five million dollars, with hundreds of onlookers who applauded and cheered. A live band played music through the night and Bob was checked into a five star hotel, compliments of MegaSoft Corporation, after the festivities. His housemates never saw him again; he never returned to his room to retrieve his belongings nor to give each of them the promised share of the prize money. A few weeks later, Will Tate, the president of MegaSoft, passed peacefully away in his hospital bed.

The last thing that was heard about Bob Wurm, was that he had bought a mansion and the island on which it was located. Apparently, one of his paid financial advisors had suggested that he invest in some third world shoe-making factories; they were later taken to court on accounts of polluting the local water supplies with leather dyes and killing the fish in the lake; Bob bought the best lawyers and got away scot free to continue destroying the environment.

'So much for responsibility,' said Joseph to one of the customers at the bar as he poured them a whisky, 'yeah, I knew the guy, and I'm glad to see the last of him; men like him will never be happy with what they have; not until the whole world is on it's knees.'