Ronald Vance was right about everything. Or so he believes. After all, nobody knows more about, well, anything, than Ronald. I suppose it’s easy to think you have the inside track on life when you inherit a portfolio of properties and a super-sized bank account. Not to mention connections. College admissions. Introductions to future business associates. A cadre of lawyers and accountants. No starting out in the garage for Ronald. No “GoFundMe” campaign needed. Millions in assets give a guy permission to fail a few times and still be rich. And Ronald had backers – other rich guys who hoped to ride his coattails to power and ever more wealth. Hence, his unparalleled self-confidence and intuitive grasp of self-promotion. When people believe you can, often you can. And if you can’t, it can be someone else’s fault. Until it can’t anymore. Until the morning Ronald woke up in another person’s life.
The night before, Ronald Vance was engaged in his usual doom-scrolling. He often had a hard time falling asleep without a generous portion of praise served with a side order of admiration. At one point, his phone emitted a series of harsh violet flashes, causing Ron to turn it aside while shielding his eyes. “What the…?” was his only reaction. Still, he fired off another few attention-seeking posts on his favorite social media platform – the one he owned – before drifting off to a fitful slumber.
It seemed as soon as he had been welcomed into the arms of a deep sleep, he awakened. The room had changed. The bed was creaky and stiff, like his joints. The sheets and pillows were old and worn, but clean. And the décor – where were his trophies and flattering portraits? Then, he heard a woman’s voice from the next room, “Good mornin’ Ron! Better hurry. You don’t want to be late, hon.”
He started to ask, “Late for what?” Then it hit him like a ton of bricks, or rather, a ton of coal. His job was to dig coal. The company bus would be leaving in a half hour. He was a coal miner. He had a wife and three boys to support. He knew their names too: Eric, Bobby, and J.D. His wife was Tiffany. They were childhood sweethearts. Ron had a mortgage and a car payment. Not to mention a persistent nasty cough. Tiffany wasn’t bad looking. Especially in her sheer rayon bath robe – a birthday present from Ron. She had cooked his favorite – bacon and eggs. But how did he know all this? What happened to his billionaire life? What happened to the President’s Bedroom and the Oval Office?
Imagine what a day working in a coal mine feels like when you haven’t done any manual labor in your life. Then, when you get home, you need to fix the fence and mow the yard. At least Tiffany made meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner. She looked great, especially considering she had worked all day as a receptionist at the local veterinary clinic. Ronald really wanted to have sex with her, but he was so exhausted that he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Ronald woke up in a bunk on a fishing trawler. The captain, Pete Miller, was barking orders over the intercom. “Vance, Kennedy, Duffy! Aft deck! We’ve got work to do!” That day, Ronald almost lost an arm. If Miller hadn’t been there to pull him back, the line would have looped around and…well, he didn’t want to think about it. Although he knew what he was supposed to do, he really had no idea how hard these guys worked. He’d never been fishing before, let alone in a commercial boat. He slept like he did after clubbing all night in the 80s.
When he opened his eyes, he was on a ladder picking fruit in the Georgia sun, surrounded by a crew of migrant workers, all dressed in checkered shirts, straw hats, and jeans. After several hours of backbreaking work, ICE agents showed up to haul everyone off to a detention center. There he was kept without food and water but given a mat to lie down on the concrete floor of a chain-link cage. It took him a couple of hours to drift off.
Ronald’s eyes opened to a motel room. The boss, Kristi, told him to hurry up and clean up “all that puke” and to make sure the toilet sparkled. “Remember, you’ve got to clean every room on the second floor by noon,” she said. When he passed by a mirror, Ronald noticed “he” was a “she” and remembered she was a single mom who needed this job to make ends meet. She couldn’t afford to get fired. Her day was filled with taking care of the messes left by visitors. Not one of them ever thanked her. That night, after Ronnie put the kids to bed and did a few chores, she fell asleep on the couch.
Every day for a month Ronald awakened to a different job. All of them were hard work and most of them were considered dirty. He longed for just one day as an investment banker, golf pro, or real estate tycoon. Yet he bounced around from forest fire fighter to waitress to roofer to window washer to foot soldier to foundry worker to roustabout to bedpan washer to truck driver to grave digger to stall mucker to sewer cleaner to dish washer to leather tanner to trash collector to — you get the picture.
One month turned into two, and two dragged on into three. Ronald Vance was on the verge of losing his mind. 99 thankless, dirty, dangerous, or physically taxing, but honest-day’s-work jobs. 99 days of helping make ends meet for 99 people who had no choice – if they wanted to survive. 99 people who lived on the edge, paycheck to paycheck, with mortgages, rent, bills, children, and often no health insurance, so they and their families couldn’t afford to get sick. Some had good relationships. Some did not. Some were married. Some were estranged, divorced, or widowed. Some had good kids. Some had to deal with juvenile delinquents. For over three months, Ronald felt the pressure of just getting through the day only to face another punishing day. He prayed he would soon get off the wheel of torture. This is how he thought of it. For all he knew there was no end in sight.
On the 100th day, Ron opened his eyes to a nearly forgotten scene: The President’s Bedroom in the White House. He sighed. He chuckled. He was home at last. For a moment he thought it was all a bad dream, like in The Wizard of Oz. So, he called Dr. Oz, who told him that he had gone missing for a day only to turn up where he was last seen. Nobody could explain what happened. “We’ve never seen anything like it,” was all Dr. Oz could say. Maybe Ronald experienced multiple quantum realities within a single day. Who knows? He was back in charge and that’s all that mattered to him.
I’d like to say Ronald Vance learned a valuable lesson and was changed into a humble and compassionate person. But I can’t. Because he wasn’t. Nothing about him changed. He still thought of hourly wage earners as “losers.” He continued to measure others by what they could do for him and the world by the money it could offer him. For a moment, near the end of his job hopping, he had a feeling he might have been wrong about everything. He was glad when that feeling passed. He learned “how the other half lives” only to confirm his original belief: he was far superior to everyone else. After all, only a great man can live so many lives.
MurrayWorks 