The Weight

THE WEIGHT is a fictional story with a purpose.

A frugal older man despises state and national lotteries because he believes they rob the poor. He buys his first ticket out of compassion for a minority cashier working on Thanksgiving. He does not tell his wife or check the results in the newspaper. His numbers match and he wins $1.61 billion. His dilemma intensifies as others find out. His wife's deadly cancer returns. He becomes the target of a kid-nap crime. One of his sons has a gambling addiction. He must navigate a new life that is fraught with difficult decisions. He is predisposed to not turn in the winning ticket.

The characters are depicted as those we would know by type, tendency, and temperament. The exercise of introducing unusual circumstances to usual routines is meant to extol the process of time-sensitive evaluation. His dying wife teaches him to meet moments bravely. Difficult choices deliver the characters to a nexus of conflict. One must move forward, detour sideways, or simply procrastinate by the weight of indecision.

The temporal life we coddle will not assure us of conviction, contentment, or resolution. The all-too-human detours of folly provide us the wisdom that engenders self-deprecating humor. Ostensibly, the weight of indecision is carried by all of us. In a larger sense, we must define our sense of fairness, faith, and truth.