Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

I'm pretty confident many, if not most, Hubbers joined HubPages (and perhaps dabble in other Internet ventures as well, as I do) in the hopes that someday they'll become millionaires. If not millionaires, they at least hope to earn enough from the Internet to make a living from it.

I know I do.

I recently posted on the HubPages forums that I had made my first amount of money of any kind on HubPages. It was a whopping total of 13 cents.

I noted at that rate, I'd be a millionaire by the time I'm, oh, say, 1,437 years old.

I also noted that, by the time I became a millionaire (at age 1,437), a million dollars wouldn't be worth much. And I'd probably have to spend it all on health care anyway at that age.

The whole thing led me to daydream... what if...

I imagined myself traveling 1,437 years (give or take a decade or two) into the future. I “saw” panhandlers asking for a million dollars and people actually giving it to them! Of course, a million dollars is what a can of soda cost in this future I envisioned.

I thought, “This is great!  Let me ask somebody for, oh, just $500,000, and go back to 2009 with it! I might not be rich but I'll be in great financial shape!”

Having hatched my plan, I approached a kind-looking man on the street.

“Hey mister, can you spare...,” I began to ask but was cut off.

“Beat it, you bum,” he said.

“Well!” I thought.

I walked up to a young man.

“Hey mister...” again I was cut off.

“Get a job, you lazy bum,” and adding insult to injury, he said “Get some new clothes while you're at it. Where'd you get those weird clothes you're wearing, the thrift shop?”

I was so angry I almost gave the guy a good taste of my fist but I thought better of it. I might discourage the next prospect, who was only a few steps away.

“Hey mister, can you spare..” I paused, feeling awkward for asking for what amounted to a small fortune in my time, “...can you spare $500,000?”

“Why sure,” said the kind stranger as he reached into his wallet.

He pulled out a one million-dollar bill and actually apologized for it.

“I only have a million dollars. That okay?”

“Sure,” I said, smiling and in my mind screaming, “I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm rich!”

The kind gentleman handed me the million-dollar bill and wished me a good day; I returned the good wishes and stuffed the bill into my wallet.

I walked—no, I RAN—back to the time machine that propelled me forward in time in my daydream, and scrambled to return to 2009. I kept singing “We're in the money” over and over again as I went back to my year.

After I made sure that I was indeed back in 2009 at the same point in time I had left, I immediately went to my bank.

I walked up to a teller window, already thinking of what I'd do with the million dollars.

“How can I help you, sir?” asked the teller, a young lady.

“I want to make a deposit of...” I mustered up my best Dr. Evil impression, “one MILLION dollars.”

I handed the shocked-looking teller a deposit slip and the million-dollar bill.

“Um, just a second sir,” she said as she went away to confer with another teller. They spoke in hushed tones a few seconds, then my teller came back.

“Um, sir, I have to go speak to the branch manager. I'll be right back.”

“Great,” I thought, sarcastically. “Just my luck.”

In minutes, the teller came back with the branch manager.

“Did you know we could have you arrested for trying to pass off counterfeit bills, sir?” the branch manager asked me.

“That's not counterfeit!” I protested.

“Well, sir, the quality might be good but first of all, it says it's printed in 3439,” the branch manager explained. She continued.

“Also, the person pictured on the bill, Rudi Giuliani the 56^th, has never been President of the United States.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And last but not least, there is no such thing as a million-dollar bill. The highest denomination bill ever was the one-hundred-thousand dollar bill which was taken out of circulation a long time ago,” she added.

My shoulders slouched as my dreams of being an instant millionaire were dashed in an instant.

At that point, I “woke up” from my daydream. And I went back to work writing my more hubs. Hey, if I can make 13 cents from 11 hubs, and I really want to be a millionaire, I'll have to write about 7,692, 296 more hubs to reach my goal!