Story 145: You Don’t Get What You Want, You Get What You Need

            “I can’t believe I got passed over for promotion again!  I mean, I know I’m always late to work and I underproduce, but I’ve been there long enough, by golly, I deserve advancement!”

            “Yeah, I think you’re better off where you are now.”

            “And where is that, not promoted?!”

            “Not fired.”

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            “Yet another losing lotto ticket, why am I always surprised?  Why can’t I ever win the $100 million jackpot – I’ve got bills to pay and yachts to buy!”

            “Don’t you also have those cousins who keep asking you for money, and the only way you get them to go away each time is because you’re legitimately almost-broke?  What about greedy relatives you don’t even know you have right now, or con artists, or outright thieves – what’re they going to do to you when they find out you have $100 million?  Minus taxes?”

            “Maybe I can just win the $5,000 jackpot, then.  Minus taxes.”

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            “So close!  I was so close to buying my dream house, and some nameless shadow swoops in with a ridiculously higher offer!  That was my house, man!  If it felt so right, how could the universe have snatched it away from me at the last minute like that?!”

            “You’re still going on about this?  It was over a year ago!”

            “I will always be bitter.”

          “You do realize that house was in the development that was just demolished for the new bypass, don’t you?  If you had bought it then, you would’ve had to find a new dream house all over again anyway.”

            “I don’t care, it’s the principle of the thing!  It was mine and that guy nabbed it!”

            “Joke’s on him then, I guess.”

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          “I was supposed to spend the summer relaxing by the shore, and instead I’m spending it trekking to doctor’s offices and hospitals getting treatments for inconvenient growths!  What a pain in the neck!”

            “You want to see next summer?”

            “…Point taken.”

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            “Aw, rain all day right when we’re having our big party!  Why can’t it be nice and dry all summer long?”

            “We’ve had a drought for a month – the reservoir’ll finally be filled and the crops will stop dying.”

             “Yeah yeah, but couldn’t all that have happened tomorrow?”

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            “I was all set to adopt that cute little kitten in the store, and then my friend up and moves and gives me her extremely old cat to take in!  I can’t get the cute little kitten now that I’ve got this old dude, it’s so unfair!”

            “I bet that old cat really needed you, though – he had to leave his mom and go to a new home at his age, so at least he’s not in a shelter.”

            “I guess, and he’s not as raucous as I was prepared for with the kitten, and he’s clean and quiet and pretty cuddly and stop making me notice the benefits of the extremely old cat!”

            “You sure do complain a lot.”