Greed and Gold by Jonathan Parker

Once there was a man named Andy. Andy lived in a small town in Oregon, where he owned a store. This store supplied almost all of the town’s shopping needs, since there wasn’t a Wal-Mart or Target for fifty miles. The store had everything; groceries, cleaning supplies, toys for children, DVD’s, video games, sports supplies, musical instruments, and almost anything else you can buy in a store. Everyone from the towns near Andy also shopped at the store, and almost half the town worked at the store. All this business made Andy very rich.

If there was one thing that Andy loved, it was money. This was good, because he had a lot of it. He reveled in the thought that he was the richest and most famous person in town. Whenever he was chauffeured around town in his stretch Hummer limousine, people would point and stare at him. After some good investments in the stock market Andy was so rich and famous that sometimes Bill Gates would stop by his mansion to ask for money.

One day Andy decided to commemorate how rich and famous he was. He bought all the gold in Fort Knox from the US government, and hired 5,000 people to build a giant statue of himself made of solid gold. He decided to call it the Statue of Andy, and build it right in the center of his little town at the entrance to his store.

The statue took five months to finish, but when it was done it was the most impressive man-made monument ever built, rivaling the Pyramids in grandness and majesty. The base of the statue was over 2000 feet wide, which forced Andy’s company to bulldoze the houses around the store in order to make room. The statue was over a mile high, and depicted Andy pointing at the sky in an inspirational pose. It was so enormous that it blocked out the Sun in all the cities surrounding it on certain hours of the day, acting like a gigantic sundial.

Eventually, after two months of enduring living with the Statue of Andy, the citizens of the towns around it decided it had to go down. Huge mobs of protestors appeared at the statue. Thousands of people picketed Andy’s giant store, robbing him of all his business. Since Andy still had to pay for the upkeep of the store and his workers’ wages, he lost money rapidly. Soon Andy realized that things would have to change.

When Andy woke up the next morning he walked out of the mansion that he had built inside the statue. He stood on the makeshift balcony of his giant statue’s hand, and addressed the people protesting below. “People protesting my statue!” he said, “I have decided to pacify you. Everyone who stops protesting my statue will get $200 worth of store credit, free of charge!” The people below, however, did not share his enthusiasm.

Andy was out of ideas. He had no money left, and no one ever came into his store. Walking inside his deserted store, he got an idea that would make everyone happy. He ran out to tell the people picketing, and they agreed to try it.

A week later, Andy walked to his office on the top floor of his giant store. People smiled and greeted him politely as he walked by. They were all wearing new gold jewelry and watches. When he got to the top floor of the building, several people were waiting for him. They all started talking to him at the same time. “Hello, I’m from the National Homeless People’s Fund. Thank you for giving us ten billion dollars worth of gold,” said one of them. “I am a representative of the Starving People in Africa Fund, and would like to thank you for your $10,000,000,000 donation,” said another. Andy plowed through the crowd of people and walked into his office. He sighed and looked out the window. His giant golden head, resting where the entire body had been a week before, stared back at him. Andy sighed. He wished that the entire statue was still there, but he realized that the statue did more harm than good, and everyone seemed to be happy with the new arrangement. He had a lot of work to do, so he sat down at his desk and tried to forget about it.