Money

by Charissa Nasrallah   

I informed the man from the EPA my plan would not happen, so he advised me towards more traditional forms of compensation, such as $10,000.   He told me the park was entitled to pay me money for lost wages, back pay, damages and emotional distress, then he preceded to encourage me to ask for $20,000 in order to start the bargaining high, in order to reach our goal.

The opportunity to take money from a state so poor most of the schools were little more than trailer parks did not appeal to me, but neither did letting the whole situation go unresolved.

I didn’t deserved nearly that much money for what had happened, but I felt that I deserved something, so upper management would have to think twice the next time they attempted to treat someone as unfairly as they had done me.  I convinced myself I owed this to the next person who busted them for any further ecologically unsafe practices, plus I also figured the park owed it to me for the years of work I did for them under such little pay.  I think it’s great that one of humanity’s traits is having our own unique ways of rationalizing what we do.

Despite my explanations to myself, the notion of demanding payback money was still somewhat unsettling to me.  I had always been raised by my parents to be a giver, rather than a taker, and this was always extremely easy for me to do since my parents were loaded and had basically given me everything I ever wanted or needed, plus more. 

I was raised by successful and kind parents in a big house with plenty extras.  I quickly became aware of the fact I was spoiled, even past the point of the average American.  My mother shopped excessively and during most of my life I leeched on to her extras.  As time passed and I grew older, I rarely shopped at all in a personal attempt to limit my family’s consumption rate. 

My family’s possessions provide us well over with what we needed, but all of it also required considerable maintenance.  Fortunately the members of my family were also hard workers, and I grew up for a true appreciation of what it was to do a hard days labor. 

When I left home to go to school I discovered I did not need nearly as much as I had been granted as a child.  Bigger living spaces only required more up-keeping, maintaining more room for unneeded things.  I made attempts to simplify my life and for the majority of my college days I lived one side of a duplex with 5 other girls, and any random bum who might have crept in the broken window to stay in our basement. 

After I graduated, my parents gave me a Jeep Cherokee, that I immediately began to use at whim to meet my needs.  In perspective, I probably put more toxins into the environment driving my jeep around than the park had actually put in the marsh, but because of a socially accepted type of laziness, I continued to drive it around.  One day I vowed to make my goal of the millennium to get around with out it.

Perhaps my strong feelings against the pursuit of tangible wealth had originated from an early aged desire to rebel, either against my parents or society.  To me, money might assure us that are basic needs will mostly likely be met, but it can also offer a false sense of security.  The people with the most money are usually the ones who get robbed, probably due to karma or just nature’s way of keeping things balanced.

I had never put all the time and effort into my work at the park for money, and I questioned whether or not it was the right thing for me to do now.  It seems as though I had lost focus on some of my life’s goals after I had lost my job, and at moments I felt it was as if a part of my moral soul had vanished when I lost the opportunity to do what I love.

Because of my lack of a steady income, once again I seemed to arrive at a moment in my life where I was just about broke, so I decided it was about time to move back to Ohio and live with my parents.  I felt defeated by the fact I had to leave the state with so many things unresolved and I was extremely fortunate that my parents always welcomed me into their house with open arms despite my flops and failures.

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