Trade

Trade 32 (Epilog) by Mark James

It has been 5 years since the world went to hell. The world population is hovering at 4,000,000,000 - a 45% reduction.

The United States withdrew its troops from the rest of the world and stopped being the world's policeman. It downsized its military and mothballed most of its fleet and air force. It lost 50 million people in nuclear attacks. It defaulted on its 14 trillion foreign debts. All of the jobs which had been outsourced around the world came back in house. During the period of martial law the army solved the illegal alien problem by shooting them when they crossed the Mexican/U.S. border. Most of the American expatriates and retirees that weren't killed by Mexican extremists moved somewhere else. In actual fact it ended up being stronger economically after the destruction than before but it still turned isolationist. It is now a benevolent dictatorship.

Russia took advantage of the disarray in China and invaded it. It is still there, mired down in a guerrilla war like it has never experienced and is being drained dry economically.

Brazil and other South American countries became the grocers to the world. In deference to its new economic status Brazil bought surplus ships, planes and nuclear submarines from the U.S and greatly expanded its armed forces.

South Korea and Germany are the new economic military strong men in Asia and Europe and they are already using their status to bully other countries. I guess people will never learn how to get along.

The Catholic Church is in disarray. They can't agree on where to locate the papacy and have not elected a new Pope although there appears to be a self appointed Pope on most continents. The self proclaimed Popes pop up, get assassinated and are replaced with regularity. The Catholics lost their historic documents, their legitimacy and billions of dollars in assets when the Vatican was bombed.

The internet came back as other servers replaced those that had been destroyed.

Since the super rich do not advertise their wealth it is hard to know but we may be one of the richest families in the world. Me, Bill and Greg came out of the world wide apocalypse with 250 billion dollars, but 70 billion of that went to taxes which left us with 180 billion. Bobby and Gene parlayed their money into almost a billion dollars and Barry ended up with almost a half a billion. The chance to do that again may not happen for another 1,000 years. Many people who had invested in gold got in at the top of the cycle and took a bath as the price of gold and silver fell from a high of $30,000 an ounce back to the $300 dollar range. We replaced our 104 tons of gold which we sold off when gold reached $30,000 an ounce at its current price of $300.00 an ounce.

Yielding to the exigencies of wealth and power we created our own army and secret service. We have funded the election of politicians all over South and Central America for our protection and for the good of the country.

We have 6 children, 3 girls and 3 boys, Bobby and Gene have 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls. And Barry and Julio have 4 also, 2 boys and 2 girls.

Who is Julio you ask?

He is Barry's life partner.

Barry temporarily paired up with a lot of guys until he found Felix. Felix was handsome, well built and rich and Barry was hopelessly in love. We knew he was the guy when Barry brought him to dinner to meet us all. He had never done that before. Everybody was very impressed, but Gene wasn't there.

Barry went looking for him and found him in the library.

"Come on I want you to meet Felix."

"I can't," Gene said, "He Is going to break your heart."

"What do you mean?"

Gene told us later he was furious with Gene and then Gene wasn't there anymore and he was channeling in a different voice. The voice told Barry all about Felix, who he said was a spy and described what Felix would end up doing if Barry continued the relationship.

Gene told us when he came out of his trance not knowing what he had said that Barry was sitting there as white as a sheet and coldly furious.

"I'm sorry, what did I say?"

Barry just waved at him and went to the phone and called Major General Alvarez.

Barry was on the phone for a while and what he had told Barry filtered back into his memory. When Barry came back he hugged Gene and said, "I love you, thank you."

Gene told us he sat back down and was uncontrollably crying.

Barry came back to the dining room, said Gene was indisposed and we continued the dinner. 30 minutes later General Alveraz arrived and was ushered in by the butler.

"To what do we owe the honor General? You are just in time to meet Barry's special friend. This is Felix Torres."

They shook hands and General Alvarez suddenly got him in an arm lock and said "Felix Torres, you are under arrest for treason."

Two soldiers appeared and took him into custody.

"You son of a bitch I ought to kill you," said Barry.

"Fucking faggot," Felix said.

Barry decked him and said, "Get him out of here."

Gene appeared at the dining room door looking haggard and spent and said, "I'm so sorry Barry."

Barry got him in a bear hug and said, "It wasn't your fault."

"Will somebody please tell us what is going on," I said.

So Barry described his meeting with Gene and what he had been told by Gene (or whoever it was he was channeling) and then he went to pieces and started sobbing.

"I almost got us all killed. How could I have been so stupid," he wailed.

We finally got him settled down, but that was when we realized we needed our own secret service. Background checks suddenly became routine for anybody who had contact with the family.

Of course Barry recovered and had many more boyfriends but whenever it got serious with one of them he introduced them to Gene. He lost a lot of boyfriends that way until Julio came along. When Julio met Gene, Gene could hot have been more receptive unless he had stamped "This is the one" on Julio's forehead. The rest, of course is history. It was a small, quiet wedding. We had finally come to terms with the fact that our fortunes had made us targets and large gatherings of any kind were to be avoided.

They bought a horse ranch that specialized in polo ponies.

Bill, Gary and I had moved to the beach house as we started having children to avoid disturbing the others. Nannies, nurses and screaming kids do not made for the contentment of others. When Bobby and Gene had children they moved to the beach with us and when Barry and Julio started there wasn't room so we bought a much larger estate and everybody moved there.

It was summer in the Condor's nest and winter in Rio although it was like moving an army each time we relocated.

We renovated a large skyscraper that we had purchased for a song in down town Rio during the troubles and used it as the focus of a huge redevelopment in downtown, most of which we owned. All of our various companies and facilities were relocated to there. But everything on our computers was backed up in at least 2 different off-site places every day.

We spun off all of our electronic assets into a separate company and Gene became the President. Neither Gene nor Bobby went back to school. Bobby bought an old, tired architectural firm and brought it back to life. There is nothing like starting at the top. When you are worth in excess of a billion dollars you can pretty much do what you want to do. What was surprising was that his firm won the contract for the design of our Rio redevelopment effort. Nobody believes it but there was absolutely no favoritism in the awarding of the contract.

We had a lot of homes and the third time Henry fired a butler we asked him if he would be willing to take over our hospitality and housekeeping function as a Vice President. We offered him 10 million dollars as a signing bonus and a million dollars a year. He declined saying that he would rather remain with the family. We asked him what if we get somebody else to do the day to day work and they report to you but you get the same salary. He agreed. He went through more than a few assistants at the beginning who thought he was unnecessary until he found Miguel. He married him. We couldn't be in better hands.

I don't think he bargained for 14 children and all the extra people that went with them but that's what he got and he loves it. Everybody calls him Uncle Henry and he doesn't let anybody get away with anything. And then he and Miguel had 4 children of their own. The more the merrier, but we had to move to a much larger estate.

In our business dealings we run across the name A. Lee occasionally as a competitor and we always drop out of whatever the deal is and leave it clear for Mr. Lee. I am sure that some day I will open the door and he will be standing there. It would be nice to see him again.

None of Bobby or Gene's family wanted to move to Brazil. I still don't know if they are hurt or happy about it. It can't be fun living in the USA today.

Oddly enough I had a call from Sheriff Amos yesterday. He is coming for a visit to see if he wants to live here. We sent a plane up to get him

The house is in turmoil today because it is swim day. All of the kids are going to learn how to swim. It is best to learn how to swim very young because then it is second nature as you grow up. Some are excited, some are scared and some don't know what is going on. Everybody is here, which is unusual, but the parents have to be here to be with and encourage the kids.

Next they are going to learn how to ride a horse, again the younger the better. We bought a second horse ranch, which Barry and Julio manage to provide horses for the family. We all try to be in the audience when Barry or Julio is competing in a polo match. Talk about a logistical nightmare.

Speaking of kids, we dumped 5 billion dollars into the equality foundation in the U.S. It now has a presence in all of the major U. S. cities. We have rescued at least 400,000 gay kids from the streets, given them a place to live and a chance to finish their education through college. We are even the employer of last resort if they can't find jobs with anybody else.

We have similar foundations here in Brazil and in Europe. They are also doing a fine job. It turned out that we were the owners and operators of the largest escort service in Brazil. The first thing we did was to rescue those people who were forced into the business and wanted out. Surprisingly there weren't that many. Sex is looked on a different way down here and the business was operated entirely above board.

We posted a reward of 50 million reals for an HIV vaccine and an equivalent amount for an HIV cure and set up a 5 billion real charity to provide the funds for any likely avenues of attack. We have high hopes.

It fact we have funded so many charities that we had to have two additional skyscrapers to house their offices.

It turns out that when you try to help people you need a thick skin. Our efforts at helping gay children forced onto the streets became so successful that we were accused of discrimination against non-gays. It was so unfair and so mean minded that I was really pissed off. I was persuaded to set up a sister foundation to help anybody involuntarily on the streets who needed help regardless of their sexual orientation. Of course the critics just thought of something else to criticize, but I learned to ignore them.

I spend most of my time dealing with the charities. But none of us really spend a lot of time on business any more. We have the art of delegation down to a fine science. We spend a lot of time with our children and each other.

There is a dark side to life however. Bill wasn't surprised but I was. Malicious lawsuits, blackmail, physical threats, cyber attacks, there were lots of things that the legal system couldn't or wouldn't handle. Brazil has no death penalty but we do. Street gangs and organized crime tried a comeback in Rio. Somehow the ring leaders died. Cyber attacks were tracked back to their originators and they were never heard from again. Malicious lawsuits got mysteriously terminated. Physical threats were not tolerated. Religious and political demagogues arose spewing hate and intolerance and always ended up dying in some kind of accident sooner than later, before their pernicious message could do permanent damage. Bill always handled it.

It reminded me of "The Godfather." I was too squeamish until our children were threatened and then I was ready to kill anybody or destroy anything if that was what it took to keep them safe. Bill again handled it but that time he let me see how it was done. I had forgotten that Bill's wealth was derived from illegal activities and that he had taken it all legal. He had put together a small elite super secret highly efficient organization buried so deeply and under so many cutouts that it could never be traced back to us, but it was in fact just a highly visible social club located on a public street that anybody could just walk in to from the street. It was the perfect camouflage.

There were super encrypted computers, passwords and ties with a myriad of other similar government and private organizations. Bill had begun putting all of this in place before we had even moved down here. The latest threat had come from an offshoot of a branch of the Catholic Church attempting to reconstitute the inquisition. Among the many things they were against, they were violently anti-gay. That had a lot of people upset not just us. Nobody died, at least not directly, the movers and shakers in the movement just disappeared.

There are whole groups of people to whom ordinary laws don't apply. (Of course they don't apply to us either but we like to think we are the good guys.) They can eliminate or buy witnesses and obfuscate the law and evidence. In this case a Cardinal of the Catholic Church wrapped himself in the mantle of the church and did whatever he and his minions wanted to do to whomever they wanted to, using the wealth and power of the church. He thought he was inviolate and he was to ordinary law but the Brazilian government had figured out how to deal with such people.

Brazil has a lot of jungle. The Cardinal was just scooped up in his regal vestments and deposited in a very isolated camp with 30 others that constituted the leadership of his movement. They just couldn't leave because the only way in or out was by air. They and the others who were there before them could farm and hunt to survive or die. Mostly they killed each other.

The Cardinal was highly incensed and immediately tried to exert his supposed influence on the people who were already in the camp. He and his followers were quickly disabused of such notions, stripped of their clothes, beaten into submission and put to work in the fields as farm laborers.

This was all known because the camp had audio and visual surveillance although the people maintaining the surveillance did not interfere in the camp's operations.

For you much maligned conspiracy theorists out there I just want to go on record as saying you were right on the mark. Most of the things that happen in the world are the result of a gentlemen's agreement by the rich and powerful. You can call those agreements conspiracies if you like. Bill had told me early on that money was nice but that if I did not use it to accumulate power then somebody else who did would take it away from me eventually.

Three more years have gone by and the world is still going to hell.

After losing Tokyo and the Imperial family to an atomic bomb attack from North Korea, Japan scrapped its constitutional prohibition against maintaining a standing army and has rearmed. South Korea has united with the old North Korea and is the dominant force in Asia. There is no love lost between Japan and Korea.

China stalemated Russia in its attempt to conquer the country. It converted missile warheads into satchel bombs, hand delivered them to Russia and destroyed Russian cities, military facilities and manufacturing centers. Russia attempted to sue for peace but China ignored them and chewed up the occupying armies which could no longer be supported by the Russian homeland. In a last desperate attempt to stop the Chinese Russia used its last missiles to drop dirty bombs on the few areas that China had where crops could be grown. Russia ceased to exist as a cohesive country. China's population had been reduced to 300,000,000 people from a high of 1.5 billion 8 years ago. Korea Japan and India started moving into what used to be Chinese territory. Japan captured Vladivostok and moved to take the riches of Siberia. Germany parachuted troops onto the oil fields of Russia to insure its supply of oil.

The United States did not interfere with what was happening around the world. The United Nations had ceased to exist when New York was destroyed by nuclear weapons. The new US capital is in St. Louis, Missouri. All foreign aid was stopped. There was no outpouring of aid to other counties to help them cope with the starvation and disease that had become rampant in the rest of the world. Immigration was effectively stopped except for selected individuals who had valuable skills of use to the nation. The US is entirely isolationist even though it has the largest number of operational nuclear weapons on the planet.

Israel, freed of the specter of annihilation by militant Islam, fed by continuing immigration of Jews from around the world expanded by leaps and bound into the surrounding vacant country side.

We added 2 more adults to our family. We reached the 9 people that had been forecast by Gene. Bobby and Gene found Harry and Barry and Julio fell in love with Nick. The laws allowing multiple marriage partners had never been repealed, so Bobby, Gene and Harry got married and so did Barry, Julio and Nick.

Dealing with business took first place, family second and sex third. But we were all young men in our twenties or early thirties so coming in third was a relative term, but we took time out with each addition to our family to have a group orgy to cement our family relationships. The addition of 2 more adults resulted in the creation of 4 more children. I don't really know how many millions of dollars Harry and Nick brought with them because it really didn't matter, but I am sure Greg knows down to the dime.

Most of the kids have started school. They are all being home schooled so we had to build a separate building just for that. We also added a fully equipped hospital because there are a couple of hundred people who live full time on the estate. We all have valets, social secretaries and varying numbers of personal assistants. We ended up building a couple of luxury apartment buildings to house them and their families. The rent is free as part of each individual's compensation packages.

We do discriminate in employment. We don't employ anyone who has a homophobic bias. We don't discriminate on the basis of sex and therefore there are a lot of straight women and men employed on the estate. Some of them get married and a lot of their children play with our children. What kids wouldn't want to play with kids who have a Disneyland in the back yard.

We also have quite a number of incredibly handsome, intelligent homosexual employees and quite a few others who are as ordinary as mud except for the fact that they are gay. So you probably want to know if we rich, privileged homosexual capitalists exert the right of "droit du seigneur" on our employees. Actually we don't. It is generally the employee who tries to seduce us.

If we respond and we may because sex is sex and if sex is likely to occur we explain that it won't change anything unless they expect to benefit from it or try some form of blackmail and then it will cost them their job. Generally we try to avoid such situations and generally promotions are based on job performance not sexual performance. It is never just that simple but that is generally the way we try to handle it. Nobody has fallen in love with an employee yet, lust maybe, but not love.

I teach all of our kid's martial arts starting when they are very young. Just as with swimming and riding it is easier that way.

We decided to stay part of the year at the estancia in Argentina. We had to duplicate the building we had in Rio to be able to house everyone and had to expand the airport to accommodate larger planes.

It must have been fate that had me stop in to see Bobby on my way to visit my home town otherwise I would have never met Gene and we would probably all be dead by now. His psychic gift pops up every now and then to the benefit of us all. As an example one evening we; 20 kids and 20 adults, were all going to the theater to see a program for kids. It wasn't often that we all went anywhere together because it was a logistical nightmare but this was one of those times.

We were all getting in the cars to leave when Gene suddenly said "Everybody out, lets go back in the house. We can't go."

Talk about making yourself unpopular

You never heard such a racket, kids screaming and crying, refusing to get out of the car, yelling, "Why can't we go." You would have thought it was the end of the world, but after about 45 minutes we finally got everybody back in the house. All of the nannies were as upset as the kids because they didn't understand. Everybody looked at Gene for an explanation.

Gene got all of us parents in a separate room and said, "Somebody will kill all of us tonight if we go to the theater."

That got our attention in a hurry. We had all been through Gene's psychic warnings before and none of were inclined to argue with him.

Gene said, "I know we shouldn't go but I don't want to tell the kids the real reason. Anybody have any ideas?"

Bill's phone rang but we could only hear on side of the conversation.

"Yeah we are fine. Why?"

"Yeah but Gene wouldn't let us leave. He just told us that somebody would try to kill us if we went, so we didn't go. You know we always listen to Gene."

"You are kidding. It did. That's terrible."

Bill looked at us and said, "It is General Alvarez. He said somebody just bombed the theater and over 100 people were killed or injured. He knew we were planning to go and he was calling in the hope that we had not been in the theater."

It took 6 months for us and the General Alvarez's organization to discover who was behind the attack and to identify the people involved. We were getting ready to scoop them up when they stuck first at General Alvarez.

Gene came to the rescue again, this time by acting as a channel for another entity. We were sitting at breakfast one morning about 10:00 A. M. and everybody was laughing at a joke somebody had made, when Gene turned white, grabbed his head and screamed in pain. There was instant silence and then pandemonium as everybody reacted in a different way.

"Bill, Gene said, in a voice totally unlike his own, "Get General Alvarez on the phone, he is about to be assassinated."

Of course then there was just another kind of pandemonium until Bill yelled, "Quiet," took out his cell phone and called the general.

"General this is Bill."

"No, it can't wait. Gene just had a psychic premonition that you are about to be assassinated. Let me put the phone on speaker."

Gene said in his alternate persona voice, "General, there is only a 3 % chance that you will survive the next 10 minutes unless you do exactly what I say immediately. If you do there is a 90 % chance that your will survive. Do not trust anyone except one of your security detail named Ramon. Send your security off to do something. There is a restroom just to your right. You and Ramon go in there and dispose of your cell phones. They can be used to track you. There is a door to another corridor on the other side of the room. 50 feet down the hall there is a service elevator. Get on it and go to the basement. Exit to the right and leave the building through the open door where deliveries are received. Walk to the street and flag down the first green taxi you see. It has to be a green taxi. Have him bring you here to Gene's estate. They won't expect this move. Now go and hurry."

The phone went dead in Bill's hand.

Somebody, probably Nick said, "Will he do it?"

The voice said, "He is already in motion. He knows enough about Gene's predictions that he won't hesitate."

The voice said through Gene to Bill. "Send a military force to his house to protect his family. There is no present danger but that is the first thing he will ask about when he arrives. Just have them in the area, don't get in a fire fight with his home security detail. When he arrives he can talk to his security people about bringing them here. Many others in the building he was in are dead or dying. Here are the names of the people in his agency who were involved in the plot."

He recited the name of 5 people which Bill recorded with his phone.

"Gene will be fine after a while. I was just a little abrupt with my entry this time."

Gene's body slumped in his chair and slid onto the floor. Those closest to him hurriedly picked him up and laid him on a couch.

Gene roused and said, "What happened? God my head hurts, I need an aspirin."

He tried to sit up and couldn't make it. Somebody handed him an aspirin and a glass of water. Bobby and Harry had set him upright and had their arms around him and were crying.

Bill was on the phone to our head of security dispatching security personnel and informing the gate guard of the General's imminent arrival.

Henry had brandy brought in although it was only 11:00 in the morning because everybody was in shock.

When the General arrived Gene and Bill met him on the porch. He hugged Gene and kissed him on both cheeks.

"Thank you for my life. According to the radio it was a bloodbath."

"You are welcome, although I had little to do with it."

"Without your willingness to act as a channel there would have been no warning. You look like hell, by the way, so don't tell me it was nothing. "I'm worried about my family."

"We dispatched a security force to seal off your house. We just need you to contact your security force so we can approach without engaging in a fire fight. We will bring your wife and family here."

Bill handed him his cell phone.

That night 300 people were picked up and the 8 principals behind both attacks were arrested. The 8 principles were prosecuted and convicted under the Brazilian anti-terrorism statutes and their wealth amounting to 40 billion dollars between them was confiscated and they were executed. Most of the other 300 people went to one of the Jungle camps.

Except for events like those we seem to live an idyllic life and I always wonder how long it will last before tragedy actually strikes. I am sure life will get a lot more interesting when all of the kids we have become teenagers at the same time. I am really surprised that the 9 of us continue to live together so amicably. I thought sure that we would long since have broken up into individual family units in separate households.

We decided early on that we would be involved in out kid's lives as they grew up, so our primary estate by default became a kid's zone. We didn't have to go to work or to make more money so we stayed home essentially. People who wanted to deal with us had to come to us. We had lots of domestic help and couldn't have done it without them but we were always there for the kids. We were involved in their schooling, taught them games, played with them and watched them when they played. Although in was a domestic nightmare for the staff most of the time we all ate at least one meal together every day.

We eventually had to get triple size king size beds because we would always wake up with kids in bed with us. Sometimes there would be we three and our six kids in the bed in the morning, sometimes it would be us and up to 14 other kids in bed when we woke up. The number always got larger on the nights when we watched scary movies. Those nights were usually sleep-over nights and there would be larger numbers of kids in the house. We would go to bed and then there would be a steady stream of kids coming down the hall and climbing into bed with us. We were usually asleep and might not even know they were there until the next morning.

I remember waking up in the night one time. I was on the edge of the bed with my arm hanging off and was going to turn over but my arm wouldn't move. Sam Jr. was sitting on my hand and was wrapped around my arm. I carefully lifted him up, turned over, lay him on the bed without waking him and went back to sleep. When I woke up he was nestled under my arm.

When the kids were very young we would wake up and find them on the floor around the bed because they couldn't climb up on the bed. We installed a ladder device they could use to climb up on the bed. They just found a spot, nestled in next to one of us and went to sleep.

It was not all peaches and cream though somebody had to be the bad guy. We took turns when somebody had to be spanked, that way no one person was always the villain. There were 11 parents including Henry and Miguel and all of the kids knew they had to obey all of us, but it was the actual parents of a particular child who had to responsibility to spank or otherwise punish. I don't know who it hurt more, the child being punished or the parent punishing. But we always knew everything was alright when we woke up one morning and the punished child was snuggled up next to the parent who had punished.

It wasn't just Bill, Greg and I who had a bed full of kids every morning. I think it started with us but it spread to Bobby and Barry, so pretty soon they were out buying larger beds.

This pretty well killed everybody's sex life so we bought another estate so we had a place to have sex. We had to give parties and dinners so since we had to have a separate kid free zone in which to entertain we bought another estate for that. But after sex or entertaining we always went back to our beds so the kids could find us. I don't know what we would tell them when they were old enough to understand sex.

Our nid d'amour or love nest had rooms for anything one would want to do. The Gladstone bag of sex toys we had received on our wedding day had grown to a whole room full of whatever kind of instrument one wanted.

Sometime we all disappeared from home and had a group orgy. At other times one set of parents would disappear for a few hours, a day or even a couple of days. A couple, trio or quartet of parents might disappear for a while. Among the 9 of us jealousy appeared to have disappeared. There was variety enough among us for almost any of us to find someone to scratch an itch when the need arose. Birthdays and anniversaries were both opportunities to have an orgy or to have quiet threesome sex or both on the same day.

It wasn't that we tried to hide our sexuality from the kids. We were always kissing each other, holding or stroking each other, or watching television with our head lying in our lovers lap. This last act didn't work to well because as soon as a kid showed up they were in our lap also. We really don't know what will happen when the kids find out their parents are gay. We don't hide it but they aren't old enough yet to understand social norms. Since they are home schooled they don't get exposed to a lot of homophobic bias so who knows.

When General Alvarez was almost assassinated he and his family lived with us for 9 months until all of the conspirators had been dealt with. They are Catholic with its homophobic bias, but they treated our relationships as if they were the most normal thing in the world. Their children were old enough to know it was a gay household and it didn't seem to bother them. They lived with us long enough to almost become family and were being called aunt and uncle and their children were considered cousins by all of our children. It was heart breaking for the children when the Alvarez's moved back to their own house.

Speaking of birthdays, we had to hire a special event coordinator, whose function was to keep track of everybody's birthdays and anniversaries, a couple of buyers to buy presents, a special event planner to plan the parties and a pastry cook who did nothing but make special event cakes and Gene had one of his programmers design special software to keep track of it all. The fact that we automated the system apparently didn't upset anybody. We have hundreds of employees at the estate and our various offices and everybody's special days get remembered.

I admit it started with just trying to remember all of the family's birthdays and anniversaries and it grew from there. You don't really know what being a heel feels like until you have forgotten one of your children's birthdays or bought the wrong gift even if you didn't know the right gift even existed because you had never heard of it and a disgruntled aide or family member whose birthday you may have forgotten can lead to all sorts of problems. It really doesn't matter to them that you have a whole lot more important thing to remember than their birthdays.

Kids particularly expect you to remember not only their birthdays but all of their friends birthdays also, no matter than today's friend may be tomorrow's enemy and that tomorrow's best friend may be somebody you never heard of before. Being able to keep track of all of those dates is one of those times where having money definitely helps.

But all in all my life seems incredibly blessed even with all of the security requirements around me and I am only 30 years old. I wouldn't trade my live with anybody.

Finis