The Story - 2

O.K. so you're down on your luck and I give you a million dollars, and a fake passport. What do you do? I mean you could very well run off to a Banana Republic and come back richer and a better man, well yes better is a relative word, or you could change your identity and be someone else. Of course, you're still you, but aren't, you know, the same you. You could start all over again, do things differently. You could study and get that Grad School degree you so very much wanted instead of getting caught selling dope. You could have become a doctor instead of an extortionist. You could have become a lawyer instead of a bookie. You could have joined the army and served the country instead of robbing a jewelery store in broad daylight. You could have featured on the front page of the local newspaper, instead of the wanted list in the police station. You could have pleaded not guilty instead of pleading insanity, especially when faced with 20 years in prison. You could've started all over again at 26.

Even I could've. But nobody gave me a million dollars, or a thousand or a hundred when half way through college I realized I couldn't support an alcoholic father and a dying mother while studying in a mediocre college in a time of economic screwups. So I decided to sell dope.

I don't know how it feels to be high on drugs. I never took them. I only sold them to kids of filthy rich parents who couldn't care less whether their kids took brain enhancing drugs or crack. And I had to plead insanity.

I don't know how it feels to lose a father, not when his body is found in a drain. But I did cry when my mother died 'coz no one could take the pain of visiting a bed ridden lady in the final stage of cancer, while I was locked up in a cell for being a pusher. And I had to plead insanity.

I don't know how it feels to cheer for your home team, 'coz I was busy fixing up for rich swines making players richer for losing matches. And I had to plead insanity.

I don't know it feels to have a gun pointed at you while your life's savings are plundered right before your eyes. I neither had a life, nor savings when I robbed that store. But I sure as hell had a lot of savings after it.

Heh...

I don't know what it means to be a friend, 'coz the night of the heist when I'd have had enough money to start a new life, a life where I wouldn't have to be a pusher, a criminal, a fixer, I was ratted out by my accomplice to a cop who later took 25% of the loot. The jeweler got only half of his stuff returned to him. And what did I do?

I ratted out the bosses and bookies, the pushers and cops, the fixers and pimps, every single rat I'd known for the last 7 years. And guess what?

The next day the police shrink issued a report saying I was wrong in my head. They said I would spend six months in the loony bin and then go free, instead of 20 in the prison. So I dropped the charges and pleaded insanity.

Tomorrow I go free, to start a new life. Do I have a million dollars or a fake passport?
No.
But at least now I'm a part of the sane society.