If I Won the Lottery...

Wednesday morning I was awakened around 5 am by the howling sound of my very own Doggie Alarm Clock, Conner- who of late seems to be having serious trouble sleeping again. After letting him out to take care of business, I settled into my recliner and dozed off. I have discovered that in those early morning hours after being rudely awakened that if I go back to sleep I often have very vivid dreams. This was one of those times...and this one was simply nuts!

I dreamed that I had won a $100,000,000 lottery of some sort. Right off the bat this is odd, seeing as how I do not actually play the lottery- but what the heck, it's a dream. The second odd thing was that neither Marilyn nor Will were anywhere to be found in the dream, leaving me to assume they had dumped me before I hit the jackpot! So as the dream proceeded I was thinking of what I was going to do with all that money, and I began to think of charitable organizations to which I should make donations. After writing checks to the usual suspects (my church, cancer research, diabetes research and so on) I began to think about other places my new money could be a big help. I wrote a $250,000 check to Springfield Friends Meeting to help them refurbish the building, specifically the old youth room and kitchen in the dungeon. I wrote another $250,000 check to FUMC-Kissimmee to seed a new outreach ministry led by their new pastor, Wayne Cook. And then I found myself wondering what to give to one of my favorite places on earth, Quaker Lake Camp. That's when the fun started!

The next thing I knew I was sitting at a large conference table with what I can only assume was supposed to be the QLC Board of Directors. Leading the group was a man named Jerry Booth- who is from the church I served here in Tampa and has absolutely nothing to do with QLC. But again, it's a dream! I told them that I would like to donate a lot of money to help build the gymnasium/theater that has been dreamed about at camp for years, but they immediately begin to bicker over what the money should be spent on. One woman- who shall remain nameless here, but her initials are Boom Boom- was insisting that the donation be used to build a boat dock and buy boats for water skiing- and most of the board agreed. Now if you've ever been to Quaker Lake you know how asinine that idea is. The lake is barely big enough for a dock. There is no way you could ski there- by the time a boat got up to speed it would be crashing into the shore on the other end of the lake! But they were insistent. So I tried to bribe them. I gave this big speech and told them I would give them $100,000 and they could use it however they wanted to. OR...they could agree to build the gym and I would give them 1 million dollars! Plus I added one more catch to the deal. They new facility had to be named after Neal Thomas, my old camp director and friend who made QLC so much of what it has become today. I thought I had them in my sights. I was wrong. They rejected my deal, saying they could buy their boat with the 100 grand I was giving them anyway, and that boats were cooler than gyms. I was stunned.

But it was the end of the tale that left me laughing. I was suddenly standing on a big platform with one of those giant checks- for $100,000,000. I was denouncing Quaker Lake, saying that it was no longer my camp of choice, and saying that the best camp in the Two Pines area (I have no idea where that is; QLC is in Climax, NC) was now Camp Northstar. Yes. Camp Northstar. The one from the movie Meatballs. The next thing I knew I was presenting the check to camp director Morty (Hiiiii Mickey!) and Tripper (Bill Murray himself). They promised to use the donation to "bring more hot girls to camp" and to "install Hibachi tables in the dining hall." And I seemed just fine with that. That's all I remember.

I can only hope that the QLC board named the boat after Neal. Or even better, called it The Susie! The moral of my dream? I should never be allowed to have money...