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Tuesday, November 17, 1998

The Check's In the Mail

by Jim Chadwick ([email protected])

I got my dates mixed up the other day and went into San Francisco to attend a presentation that had already happened the previous evening. Bummer? No. I felt a little bit embarrassed, a little bit disappointed, but I was okay. I headed for the car, and then realized that it was a fine Saturday evening, I had free time, and I was loose in the city.

I've been pretty poor at various times in my life, and there's been a kind of a specter of worry that's crept into my head somehow as I've gotten older. It's a vision of somehow losing big-time, getting hit with several hard blows in a row, and finding myself out on the street with no place to go, broke, broken, sleeping under a freeway overpass at night on some cardboard. That vision has haunted me, stood in the shadows of my mind, shuffled its feet and coughed from time to time.

I walked around a little bit, and it dawned on me that I felt totally different from usual �� I felt like I had just made a million bucks. I'd spent the first part of the day working through the Fool's Workbook, was up to the point where I'd digested the Foolish Four concept, and had gleaned the web for the current numbers. I ran the info through my pencil and there it was: If things go along in the future in a manner similar to the past, all I've gotta do now is live another 28 years and the five grand that I invested will become 1.1 million dollars. I have the means to become a millionaire, at least a millionaire! The money's on it's way, the calendar is running, the check is already in the mail �� due to arrive in about twenty-eight years.

The glow I realized I had that evening came from feeling like I'd just made a major kind of right move �� something like knowing in my bones, way back when, that getting out of Ohio and going to California was the right thing to do. It's a different sense of my future than I usually have had in my life. It's something like a star to guide on, or a landmark to head for, a promise to myself that I actually believe in.

David, Tom: Thanks, guys. My heart is warm toward you. Somehow your youth and vitality have found a way to thrive and be happy and smart and creative �� and you've been inclined to share that clear vision with your fellow humans. I personally am blessed by having read what you've put out, and there must be a lot of others whose eyes have been opened by it, too. Thank you, thank you.

[Hey Fools, why not pen a Fribble, yourself? We welcome submissions from readers. Just click here and read the "What's a Fribble?" item, pen a short masterpiece, and send it off to TMF [email protected].]

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