Call me Bill Gates

I have bleach.

A few weeks ago, that wouldn’t have been a big deal. But now? Oh, baby, now it definitely is. I also have toilet paper, hand sanitizer and flour. Thanks to a tiny little virus, I’ve gone from being a man of modest means to a post-apocalyptic millionaire.

Like most turns of fate in my life, this one wasn’t planned. I bought all that stuff back in early February, just before the world went nuts and the nitwits among us decided they need 2,000 rolls of TP in order to feel “safe.” (If you currently have a garage stuffed to the rafters with Charmin, then yes, I’m talking about you, you hoarding jerk.)

I didn’t buy my bleach to ward off the Andromeda Strain or even sanitize the house after a visit from the cootie factories that are my grandchildren. I bought it because I wear white socks, often without shoes when I’m walking around the house in the evening. They get dirty. Bleach mitigates that.

The toilet paper and hand sanitizer I purchased for the same reason all non-hoarders purchase this stuff; I needed them for their intended purposes.

Thanks to blind luck, when the stores emptied out, I was already stocked up on these few essentials. Enough to last me for the next couple months, if I’m careful, which I intend to be, things being what they are.

I used most of the flour to make Irish soda bread for my St. Patrick’s Day repast. The corned beef and cabbage somehow escaped the attention of the hoarders and I was able to purchase that at the grocery without using my Kung-fu moves on any little old ladies attempting to balance the last brisket atop their TP-stuffed carts.

That made me happy. Not only did I not have to hurt any little old ladies, but I avoided the very real possibility that a little old lady might wind up hurting me. Win-win.

The only actual hoarding I’ve done myself was tins of Tuna. I’m addicted to the kind in sweet chili sauce and nobody else seems to buy it anyway. Plus, they were half-off last week, only 50-cents per can. I bought 30. Whatever I don’t eat myself I can trade for toilet paper once the hoarders realize paper isn’t edible, no matter how soft or strong it might be.

So, between my three packs of TP, two bottles of Purell, big bag of flour and cupboard full of Tuna, I’m set to enter our new Mad Max reality. Or as set as I’ll ever be.

Problem is, over the years I’ve grown accustomed to being a man of modest means. My poverty means I’ve rarely had anything anyone else wants to steal. Now? Well, like I said, I’m a coronavirus Bill Gates. And I’m ill-prepared to protect my new-found wealth.

Will barbarian hordes (of hoarders) storm my little house on the hill carrying pitchforks and torches? If they do, should I dump pots of boiling oil on them or just soak them down with the garden hose? I really don’t know the protocol.

I don’t want my response to seem unneighborly, but I also want to hang onto my three packs of toilet paper, which, just for the record, is only the cheap stuff from the dollar store. I actually prefer that to the “good” kind, though The Lovely Mrs. Taylor mocks my plebeian tastes at every opportunity. She uses Charmin at her house and isn’t she just ever so la-de-da!

I digress. My point is I now have the not insubstantial task of protecting my vast fortune. I’d buy a gun and some ammo, but I’m guessing if the panic-stricken masses are hoarding toilet paper then the firearms are also flying off the shelves and will soon be in short supply. Also, I don’t think I’m ready to cap someone over a roll of dollar store TP or a couple tins of tuna in sweet chili sauce.

I suppose if it comes down to it, anyone who breaks into my house can just go ahead and steal my TP, my flour, my tuna. I live on a lake that’s full of fish, so I won’t starve. And I suppose I could fashion some sort of crude bidet out of my garden hose (the one I was going to use to disband the rampaging horde of hoarders). So even the toilet paper is optional.

In truth, I’ll sleep better at night once I’m poor again. This wealth thing is just too stressful.

My next book is going to fix everything. Or else.

Last summer, as some of you may remember, I checked myself into the emergency room. Four days later, I exited the hospital one gall bladder shy of what I went in with.

The hospital gave me some lovely parting gifts; hand lotion, a plastic bedpan to be used for regurgitative purposes, a bottle of Vicodin, and a bill for $25,000.

It was that last item that nearly put me right back in the hospital again. 

At the time, I had no health insurance. I do NOW, oh, you betcha. Now that I’m perfectly healthy and likely to remain that way for the next 20 years or so. But I didn’t then, and that’s what counts.

The folks from the hospital’s billing department were as nice as could be; they did everything imaginable to work out payment arrangements. But it soon became apparent, to both the billing department and me, that I just don’t have enough income left at the end of each month to make the minimum payments their bean counters require in a situation like this, for a bill of this magnitude.

The bill was referred to a collection agency. As many of you already know, these places are not typically staffed with the sort of folks one would invite to a summer barbecue. Not unless one were a mob boss who needed someone greased for squealing to the feds.

Collection agents take their job seriously and are willing to skirt right up to the very edge of what the law allows in order to rake in those bucks owed. If the law permitted the breaking of kneecaps, I’m pretty sure there are agents out there who wouldn’t hesitate to wield a Louisville Slugger in the requisite manner.

Fortunately (for me and my kneecaps) they’re not supposed to do this.

Now, before you get the idea I’m complaining about the hospital, collection agency, or any of their representatives, let me assure you: I am not. I received excellent care during my time of need and I owe that $25,000, fair and square. I wish with all my heart I had the money to pay it. I just don’t. 

I’m not proud of that fact (and my mother would turn over in her grave if she knew I was talking money in a public forum; it is, after all, terribly gauche), but this is simply the way things are for me right now, the reality within which I am obliged to live.

At any rate, one of these collection agents called the other day. My caller ID read “unknown”, which is cell-phone-speak for “bill collector.” I answered anyway, hopeful that, this time, we might arrive at some amicable arrangement, even if that meant the bill wouldn’t be paid in full until my 95th birthday.

The collector was a nice enough woman. She told me to give her money. I told her I would love to, but I didn’t have any. She asked why not. I told her. This was a familiar conversation for us both and we were mostly going through the motions.

“Well, I’m looking at your website,” she said.

“Yeah?” I said.

“It says here you wrote a book,” she said.

“Yeah, a while back,” I said.

“Couldn’t you sell more books to make some money?” she said. She was serious. Bill collectors are serious people.

“Um … well, I could, if anyone would buy them,” I said. “But I wrote that book a couple years ago, and I think pretty much everybody who wants one already has one. Some people — those with wobbly tables with one short leg — may even have two.”

“Oh,” she said, still thinking. “Well, couldn’t you write another one?”

I admitted that, yes, I probably could. I then pointed out that Random House had not recently attempted to kick down my front door in order to present me with a quarter-million dollar advance on my Next Big Novel.

Like a lot of folks — more than you would believe — the nice collection lady assumed every author is a SUCCESSFUL author. I tried to explain that the difference between me and Stephen King is roughly $26 million a year.

It took her a minute to accept my abject poverty (it has taken me considerably longer), but in the end she agreed I was a likable enough deadbeat and could anticipate many long and fruitful conversations with her and her colleagues in the near future.

My fault, not hers, so no hard feelings. And who knows? She may be right. Maybe my next book is the one that’s going to propel me to the New York Times bestseller list. 

So I’ve started working on it. It’s a fictional work about a group of rogue bill collectors who finally flip out from dealing with deadbeats like me and go on a killing spree. 

If it makes enough money to pay that hospital bill, I’m going to mention the collection agent on the dedication page.

Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.  Mike’s Kindle ebook, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available online at Amazon.com and in paperback format at Robbins Book List in Greenville.