A Life Lesson

Jason felt small sitting in the large leather chair. The office was also large, with shelves full of leather bound books lining the walls. It made him feel like a child. He was trying to pay attention, but the overall atmosphere made it difficult. On the far side of the desk, a white haired man was reading slowly from the paper in front of him in a droning voice.

“… at the sole discretion of …”

Jason had completely lost the thread of what the attorney was reading. He knew that he’d have to ask for clarification at some point.

“… if he should fail to meet …”

He sighed. It wasn’t just that it was a big office, a big chair or a big desk. The language was “big”. It was hard to understand with lots of strange terms. It made him feel small and stupid, and that made it very hard to focus on the meaning of what attorney was reading. He knew that it was the details of his uncle Isaac’s will. In all honesty, he hadn’t expected that his uncle would have left him anything, but here he was. And, it seemed, not only had his uncle left him something, but there were clauses and stipulations and details and so on and so on.

“… the sum of $20,000…”

All Jason really wanted was to get back to campus to work on… wait, what was that?

“Excuse me…” Jason tried to say, but even his voice seemed small and weak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Excuse me?”

The attorney paused and looked up at Jason, looking over the top of his glasses. “Yes?”

“What was that about $20,000?”

“That is the amount that you will be given to dispose of, per the guidelines that I have been going over.”

Jason paused a moment. “Okay. Um. I’m not necessarily good at understanding all of the legal jargon. Do you think that you could break it down for me? Give it to me in plain language?”

The lawyer stared at him for several seconds, then took his glasses off and set them down on top of the document on his desk. “Well, Mr. Cohen, as it turns out I don’t need to do that. Your uncle has already laid out the guidelines in, as you put it, plain language. He did, however, employ my firm to provide the legal framework for the distribution of this money and the supervision of its distribution according to those guidelines.”

“Okay…?”

The attorney sighed, looking down at the desk. After another moment, he opened a large manila envelop and took out a small, black notebook. It looked relatively new, with rounded corners and it was held closed by an elastic band. The attorney held it up.

“Everything you need to know is in here. If you have any questions, you can let me know. I am more than happy to review the legal governing document with you again, if you feel the need.”

He set the book down and slid a piece of paper across the desk.

“Sign on the line at the bottom to receive the notebook and the check for $20,000.”

Jason quickly skimmed the document and then signed. It seemed to simply be a document acknowledging that he was agreeing to dispose of the money according to the instructions, as reviewed by the attorney and detailed in the notebook, and that he could, at any time, return any or all of the money if he felt that he couldn’t fulfill those instructions.

The attorney took the paper and slid across the desk the notebook and a cashier’s check for $20,000. A few minutes later, Jason was walking out the front door of the office building. He wanted to stop and read what was written in the notebook, but he felt like he had to get out of that office first. And now, carrying around a check for $20,000, he was feeling very nervous and self conscious. He had to take care of that first.

Another twenty minutes later and Jason was finally sitting down to open the notebook. He had stopped at the bank and deposited the check into his bank account. Now he was at one of his favorite coffee shops just off of campus. He did have school work to get done, but he couldn’t put off reading this notebook any longer. Opening the small black book, he quickly realized that it seemed to be mostly empty. Only the first couple of pages had anything written on them, and that seemed to be a letter from his uncle.

Dear Jason,

I am very sorry that we never had the opportunity to spend that much time together. That falls on me more than on you. I was busy with so many of my own affairs, and I never made the time to spend with you. Now, I have lost the chance. However, I would like to leave you with a lesson about life. Such lessons are hard to teach when one is there to try to do it in person. They are even harder to teach from beyond the grave. So, I am left with the rather limited option of giving you a guided experience that I hope will teach you something about life.

If I have judged you correctly, then you didn’t listen very well to what the lawyer had to say. That’s fine. I prefer it this way. I want to be the one to explain this to you, though they do insist on explaining things in legalese.

In any event, I have given you $20,000. You must take this money and spend it on others. I honestly don’t care how you do it, but you must not spend it on yourself. Also, it must be spent in blocks of no more than, roughly, $1000. No spending $10,000 on buying a friend a car. Think small purchases. You must also record each expenditure in this notebook, until all $20,000 has been spent. There is a pocket at the back of this notebook that you can use to keep the receipts for your purchases. You have four weeks to spend the money from the time that you signed the paperwork. Before those four weeks are up, you must return to the lawyer’s office, and present him with this notebook.

Now, if you feel like you don’t want to do this, that’s fine. Simply go back to the attorney and return the money. Any money that you don’t return, you had better be prepared to show how you spent it on others.

I know that this may sound like an imposition, but, please, humor an old man’s dying wish to give you this experience.

Love,

Uncle Isaac

Jason closed the notebook. He had half a mind to go straight back to the attorney and give back the money. This was not exactly what he had expected when he had been handed that check for $20,000. He had a lot on his plate right now. There was his class work that had a tendency to pile up, and his work-study job was not going well. He had briefly hoped that with $20,000 he’d be able to quit, but that was out now.

Yeah. He sighed to himself, feeling more than a little disappointed. Yeah, I’m going to give it back.

“Hi Jason.”

Jason looked up and saw his friend Mandy. The expression on her face almost seemed to echo his own feelings. Clearly something was bothering her.

“Hi Mandy. What’s up? You look down?”

“Yeah. So do you. Mind if I sit down? Maybe we could commiserate…”

“Sure.” He supposed that going back to the attorney could wait for a bit. “So, what’s going on?”

Mandy slumped into the chair opposite him. “I’m worried about my sister.”

“Wrong coast, right? Isn’t she over in Boston?”

Mandy took a breath. She seemed to be fighting tears. “Yes. She’s in Boston. And she’s all alone.”

Jason’s brow furrowed. “She’s a freshman at BU, right? So, I’m sure she’s not totally alone…”

“No, you don’t understand.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “She was in an accident.”

“Oh my god. What kind of accident? Is she okay?”

“She was riding her bike and a car hit her. She’s in the hospital now. They say that she’s doing alright, but I’m worried about her.”

“I can understand that. Are your parents going to go see her?”

“They can’t afford to, immediately. They’ve said that, given that she’s doing alright they’re going to go in about a week. So, now she has to be there, alone, for a week. I just wish I could go and be with her.”

“Can’t you? I’m sure that your teachers would give you some extra time on any assignments.”

“No, it isn’t that. Flights to Boston are really expensive. My parents won’t pay for me to go at all, and I don’t have enough money to buy the ticket myself.”

Jason sat in silence for a moment. He felt strange feelings warring inside him. Finally, he took a breath.

“Are they really that expensive? Let’s take a look.” He pulled out his phone and opened up a travel app. Within a minute, he had entered Mandy’s information and then pulled up a list of flights.

“See?” She said when she saw the $759 price on the first flight. “See? They’re just too much.” And she bowed her head.

“This flight leaves tomorrow morning, with a return flight in two weeks. Could you be ready to leave for that flight?”

“Well, yeah, but I just can’t afford it. And neither can my…” Mandy’s voice trailed away as she saw Jason tap the “Buy Now” button. “What did you do?”

Jason looked her in the eye. “I just helped out a friend. Now, you should go and pack.”

Tears were streaming down Mandy’s cheeks now. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Mandy stood up and came around the table. She threw her arms around Jason’s neck and held him for a minute, crying openly. Finally letting go of him, she said several more thank you’s as she gathered up her jacket and her purse, then almost ran out of the coffee shop.

Jason watched her go, then opened the notebook, pulled a pen out of his pocket, and wrote at the top of the first blank page ‘$759 - Airplane ticket for a friend that needed to go see her sister’. He closed the book again and smiled. Maybe he wouldn’t go back to the lawyer quite yet.