If I had a bazillion dollars, I'd be rich.

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I have the picture to prove it. Here's my age 5 thumbprint, stamped at one of those church bazaar booths where the artist made it into a little mouse of my own choosing. An artist. And I guess in a way, I kind of am, what with that m.f.A. degree and all. Do I use the degree? Sure. I write every day, you see it here, and here, and here. No, I didn't put myself thousands (and thousands) of dollars in debt so I could BLOG, for heaven's sake, a completely free and unpaid endeavor. But no one can say I'm not writing.


Here's what I'm also doing: I'm a stay-at-home mom. Also unpaid. Did I dream of being a mom when I grew up? I can't say that I did. I didn't rule it out as a possibility, but every time I imagined getting the things out of me, I paused. Not to mention what I would do with them once they got here. It all seemed rather impossible, but here I am, with two. And I wouldn't trade that part of my life, that job of being a stay-at-home mom, regardless.



If I could choose any job, money being no object, I would be a full-time philanthroper. So actually, money would be key, because I would need giant heaps and piles of it to do what I want to do. Say I were given a ton of it, like tomorrow. I won the lottery or something, the bazillion-dollar jackpot. I'd pay off all our debts, pay off the debts of a few close friends, maybe buy a bigger, but still modest house in the mountains of NC, and there we would live, where I would work fielding requests for fundage. People would write me letters, fill me in on their situation, and I'd decide who to send it to. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.


I wouldn't want to be famous for it. In fact, if I were famous for it, that would probably make my job a whole lot more complicated. With this job, I'd have to have my Personal Spam Filters set to the max. And I can be a bit... not necessarily naive, but overly forgiving at times. I might have to work on that. Probably hire a damn good accountant as well. But all of these issues are neither here nor there, because the answer to this question lies in Pipe Dream Land, and in Pipe Dream Land, no scheming, conniving con-artists are going to try and take advantage of my giving nature and sully my view toward humanity. Just, if someone needs a hand, I'll be there to lend it.



I got this idea, I swear, from an episode of The Rosie O'Donnell show that aired sometime while I was in college, I couldn't tell you exactly when. She had a guest on there, an older gentleman whose name I couldn't tell you, either, and he had a lot of money and this is what he did with his time. People wrote him letters, and he read through them and decided if and in what way he could help them out. Like say a woman needed bus fare to get to her job everyday, and really couldn't afford it, it was cutting into her pay where she really wished it didn't, because she had children to support. This guy, let's call him Philanthroper Man, read her letter, listened to her story, and then sent her a letter back with a check to cover exactly one year's worth of bus fares. No more, no less. And maybe it wouldn't completely change her life, like he wasn't awarding her with an Extreme Home Makeover, a trip to Disney World, and Ty Pennington on her dilapidated doorstep. But she could get to work for a good stretch of time and not worry about it. Maybe she could even get a leg up by the end of that year, money-wise, and not have to worry about bus fare for the year after that. And in that little way, by addressing an everyday, concrete need, Philanthroper Man made a difference, helped someone out.



I tried googling the once-upon-a-time, nameless philanthropic guest of Rosie, but I couldn't find him. To the point where for a moment I thought I might have been making it all up. But then it occurred to me that (if he does exist), then he should be un-google-able. I would want to be un-google-able, too, if it were me, living out this daydream. I don't know how people would find me, but I think they would, if they needed to. They'd hear about my project through the grapevine, mail their story to my PO Box somewhere in the mountains of NC, and let me know what I could do to make their life a little easier and help them out.