I’ve been good and scared some over the course of my life so far.

That’s happened to me before.

I’m good…for the most part, I’m pretty good, or at least I try to be…and I’ve had my moments where I’ve been pretty scared.

Not really “BOO SCARED” much of the time.

I don’t run around shaking in my boots very often.  I don’t quake with fear.

It’s mostly a slow burn kind of fear…the kind where I lay awake and wonder what I’m going to do now.

Last night, I realized that on occasion I’ve been kind of “cheap and scared”, too.

I remember eating somewhere in Auburn with some friends.  They were eating these Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches…the air was crisp outside…it was warm inside.  The windows were steamed with condensation and everything smelled so good. It was a good time to eat a sandwich.  I was hungry.

“How much was that?“, I asked.

My friend said, “Just what are you saving for?  A Space Shuttle?”

I don’t know what I replied.  I know that I didn’t eat a sandwich.

I think that I made myself some pancakes when I got back to the old house we were renting.

Now why would I do that?  In retrospect, I think it was because I was cheap and scared.

I was too cheap and a little too scared to step up and lay my money down.

But this time, it wasn’t a gamble…I was going to get a delicious sandwich in return for my six dollars.

I wasn’t spending the money on a lottery ticket or picking the fastest horse.

My bet at the sandwich shop was a proven and sure thing.

I could have been a WINNER.

But I didn’t take that risk.

What  I was saving for was a good question.  A Space Shuttle would be pretty cool.  It would be good to be able to get up high in the sky and come back to tell the kids what it was like.  That would be pretty cool, indeed.

It wasn’t what I was saving for, though.  I guess that when you’re cheap and scared, you’re saving for a “safe hedge” against the bad things to come in the future.

“Saving for a rainy day”.

Now the “law of attraction” might say that I was attracting the very thing I was saving to protect myself against.  That’s probably right.  It’s hard to steer straight when all I can think about are the ditches on either side of the road. You miss the pretty view when all you can see is the drop off the cliff.

It’s harder to drive around the lake and not be conscious of potential disaster since they drained it for maintenance this past Winter…and I realized that it’s a drop off of around a hundred feet instead of the gradual slope I imagined before.

Maybe I was trying to save enough to “bribe God” or something.

I know God doesn’t care about money.  He probably likes when we use it to help people…but he doesn’t have a dime in this world.  Lots of love but no dimes…so I know he can’t really be bribed. So that couldn’t have been the reason.

I don’t really know what I was saving for.  I remember the good times I passed up…I can’t remember bank statements.

Having some money is power.  People sometimes say that the Rich are powerful.

Having a full belly is powerful, too.

I should have eaten a sandwich.