Can I See the Ticket?
A kind and generous neighbor, a turn of luck and a lesson in accepting help.
Whenever I see my neighbor Bill, I can’t stop picturing him cleaning my refrigerator.
We’ll pass each other on our street, where Bill and Alexa will be quietly pushing their adorable new baby in a stroller, and I’ll instantly conjure up an image of Bill, as possessed as the father in The Amityville Horror, scrubbing the caked mud and residual creek water off of every millimeter of the one appliance that had miraculously survived the flooding in our home. (The fact that the fridge got tipped over may very well have saved the motor).
The fridge was the final project — a project that was started by my neighbor Tara, whose family deserves their own newsletter for all the help they’ve provided us — in Bill’s long day of projects at our house that first day after the flood. By the time he’d worked his way into the kitchen, he had already power-washed my driveway, driven to Lowes and procured a couple mops and buckets to remove the layers of mud from our floors and had helped the crew of neighbors, family and friends empty out the wreckage from the inside of my home. I felt horrible about amount of time and effort Bill had put into something I had viewed as my problem, but when I thanked him profusely for his time and casually brought up the idea of calling it a day, Bill looked at me as though I’d suggested he dump the newly cleaned refrigerator onto a pile was wet, sloppy manure.
“I just want to finish up the fridge,” he said. “When I do something, I like to make sure I do it right.”
Prior to the flood, I had maybe a handful of short interactions with Bill, Alexa and their baby. They were very positive interactions, the kind that make you go, “I need to hang out with them more often.” But I didn’t want the first time we hung out to consist of Bill slaving away in my trashed home.
When he first showed up at the top of my driveway asking if I needed anything, I responded the same way I did to everyone who offered to help, “Thanks so much, man, but we’re actually in pretty good shape right now.” Of course, we weren’t in pretty good shape; we were a goddamn disaster. Bill must’ve sensed this because, rather than turning around, he convinced me to let him hose down the mud-caked driveway, and six or seven hours and several tasks later, he was detailing our fridge. It was only after he could properly see his reflection in the gleam of like-new Whirlpool French door refrigerator that Bill begrudgingly headed back to his house.
‘Craziest Day’
It couldn’t have been more than an hour before I saw Bill pulling his car into my driveway. I expected him to say he was paranoid he missed on a tiny spot on the fridge and knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep without wiping it down. Instead, he launched into a story about a lottery ticket.
“So this has been the absolute craziest day,” Bill said before regaling me with a tale about how a bunch of his friends from college play in this weekly poker game that he used to take part in all the time but hadn’t done so in forever because of life and the baby and all the things that keep people from doing the really fun stuff they used to do in their twenties. Randomly, however, Bill had decided to play that week. While he was there the group agreed to go in on a Powerball ticket and wound up hitting for a not insignificant amount of money.
“So many good things have been happening to me, it’s insane,” he said, while shoving a wad of cash into my hands. “I figured you guys could use some good things, too.”
I felt my eyes starting to well up. I knew if I looked directly at Bill I’d lose it, so I focused my attention on some fixed point off in the distance and casually stretched, the way I always do when I’m trying to avoid crying in front of people. All day, I had remained positive, joking with the helpers and doing everything in my power to remain upbeat. I knew I wouldn’t get through everything if I didn’t. I later learned I was probably in some state of shock those first couple days, a condition that allowed me to put in 14-hour days without feeling the slightest bit of fatigue. But Bill’s kind gesture threatened to bring my gotta-look-on-the-bright-side façade crumbling down, which only partially explains my asinine response to him.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “You’re gonna have to show me that ticket.”
Imagine spending an entire day in a stinking, soaking, bug- and mud-filled disaster site, helping a neighbor you barely knew and then trying to hand that neighbor a big, fat handful on cash (a lot of cash), the thing he needed more than anything at that moment, only to be told by said neighbor they needed proof your incredibly generous donation was indeed the result of a statistical fluke and not just a plain old incredibly generous donation. If I were Bill, I probably would’ve said, “You’re an ass,” taken back my cash and possibly punched me in the face for good measure.
Bill did none of the above. He promised to show me the ticket.
The minute after Bill drove off, my wife’s cousin Dave, a guy who has helped me and my family through plenty of difficult situations, stopped cleaning debris from my deck and looked at me like I’d just dumped Bill’s newly cleaned refrigerator onto a pile was wet, sloppy manure.
“Look, a lot of people are going to try and help you right now,” he said. “If I were you, I would accept help from anybody who is offering it.” In the two months since the flood, I’ve learned to listen to Dave’s advice.
As for Bill, he texted me minutes after I asked for proof of his lottery win with the following: