Money Room

Money Room

 

 

A few years back I emptied out my basement and had a thick rubberized surface installed on the walls and top of the flooring.  Then I cashed in a couple of CD’s and (it took a little doing) arranged to receive the payout in bundles of bills, mostly small but a handful of hundreds because I like hundreds.

I unbundled the cash and dumped it in the basement, filling it to a depth of about five feet.  I got the idea from Scrooge McDuck.  He used mostly coins to fill his money room, with a few scattered bills as visual accents, but I thought coins would be difficult to move around in and might even cause injury. 

Scrooge McDuck had a diving board he would stand on, pressing his fingers together in a kind of prayer position, pointing them outward then down as he dove into his coins.  He could swim under his coins, submerging at one place then re-emerging without warning at another.   He could also leap out of his coins, arms at his side, arcing in the air to splash down like a dolphin.  And he could burrow like a mole, throwing up a kind of coin-dirt behind him as he tunneled.  I’ve even seen him do a contented-looking backstroke. 

All I’ve ever managed is to dip my toes into all that paper, then kind of wriggle my way down until I’m up to my chin.  I like to feel enveloped, like nothing can separate my money and me. 

Scrooge had an interesting life: born in Scotland in 1867, he emigrated to America as a teenager and went out west to become a cowboy, then a silver miner, shrewdly piecing together a financial empire to become the richest duck in the world.  While he never married, he was close to his two sisters and involved in the lives of his nephew Donald and grandnephews Huey, Dewey and Louie.

I sometimes do a kind of swimming, but what I most like is to lie on my back and float.  When you’re on top of a pile of money you’re on top of the world.  I count my money (never all of it) and sometimes picture it accumulating in an ever higher volume until I can no longer breathe and will literally drown.  But I never do.  And yes, I enjoy making a sudden sweep with my arms, then letting the bills flutter over me.

Karl Marx said money robs the world of its proper value.  But it also bestows order, and is a basis for trade and innovation.  Invested, it can help individuals and societies grow stable and secure by reproducing itself.  Not a fan of money, Marx called this an occult quality. 

Once in a while I’ll ask someone if they’d like to go swimming in money.  No one’s taken me up on it yet.  Not because they don’t find the idea appealing, but I think the thing is it has to be your money.  Swimming in someone else’s money would be like pretending to be a parent to children you don’t know.

I picture you now rolling your eyes, thinking the love of money is the root of its own evil and I should find happiness in family et cetera.  The human touch et cetera.  We’re all in this together et cetera.  Instead of being alone in a room rubbing my face with dollar bills, which is not to everyone's taste.  

But no love bears an evil flower.  Marx also said a miser is a capitalist gone mad.  Why call mad what you do not understand?  My days have a price my money has met.