Imagine going to your dream vacation, but instead getting stranded in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to go and no way to communicate with the outside world. It might sound wild, but that was what happened to me and my family on our first, and last, trip to the fabled “Disney World”.

 I’m Timmy, and as a child, the only goal in my life, other than becoming the most powerful ruler in the universe, was to go to Disney World. Money was always tight in my family, so they really never had time to take me or my sister anywhere. All day, all night, they were working nonstop. Whenever they came home from work, they looked like they took a marathon around Europe and then decided to lift a thousand pounds. It was terrible, and all I could do was sit there and look at them. I felt helpless. 

 As time progressed, I began losing hope on the current situation of our lives changing. By the ripe age of ten years old, I thought that our lives would never change. Until one day…

 My parents were becoming desperate, super desperate, so one day they took a chance. They bought a lottery ticket. It was for $1,000,000,000. Anybody who won this jackpot would have their lives changed forever. I vividly remember the day when they were calling out the numbers. We were all cuddled up next to the radio at my Mom’s work. “Lotto Number 35! Again: Lotto Number 35!” We were more than starstruck. If you saw our faces, you would’ve thought a full-fledged asteroid was coming to hit Earth. But no, it was way better. My family just won $1,000,000,000! That amount of money could feed a whole country, no, a whole continent! Our life had just changed before our ears, and we didn’t know what to do with it. 

The first thing we did after winning the lottery was get a brand-new shiny car right off the factory. Just to show how much the money changed our lives, the new car cost more than the annual paycheck of our whole family. Some may think of it as a wasteful purchase, but at the time, we thought of it as a smart investment. Plus, who wouldn’t want to be driving in a $100,000 SUV?! That was just the tip of the iceberg though. We got a new house, new clothes, beds, even my parents got new jobs! We felt like we were literally on the top of the world. We felt like royalty, while the rest of the world were peasants compared to us. Our lives went from zero to one hundred in the matter of one lottery ticket! But after all of this, something still hasn’t happened yet, Disney World! You would think after all we bought, we would surely have gone to Disney World for at least one day, but nope! Yes, cool cars and big houses are nice, but what’s the point of all of it if we can’t have fun?! Is it just to show off and make people envy our lifestyle?! Is the end goal just to hoard money until we become McScrouge and have a whole house filled with 100 dollar bills?! I think not, and thankfully, my parents realized this too. So for my birthday… MY FAMILY TOOK US (Me, Mom, Dad, and my sister, Saylem) DISNEY WORLD FOR THREE DAYS (It’s a premium suite too!)! I was ecstatic! It felt like I got into Harvard Law School! My only achievable life goal has finally been completed! I finally felt like I was going to enjoy my life, or so I thought…

First things first, when preparing for a vacation, you always need to make sure you have spare clothes. It’s a given! And you most likely would’ve thought that us too would’ve brought clothes with us. But as you’re going to see, we’re not very used to leaving our house, like at all! We panicked so much about what we should bring with us that instead we brought nothing! Not even a water bottle! Nada! But not even the worst has happened yet…

As the vacation went on, worse and worse things kept happening. When we got to the Disney resort, they somehow messed up our hotel number, meaning that we didn’t even get to stay at the premium suite we paid for! Instead, we needed to stay at one of the normal, “low class” hotel rooms. 

A few hours later at the actual park, somebody pickpocketed our Dad’s wallet, meaning that all our cash, credit cards, even our fast passes for the rides were gone. The only things we had now were our debit cards. 

At the end of this stressful day, we found out that the main water pipe in the city broke. As nobody had water, the only thing the park and resort could do was send us on our way. Of course, we were mad. No, FURIOUS! We came all this way here to relax and de-stress, but no, instead we just got more stress on our backs, especially since we don’t have any money nor our credit cards anymore. But of course, this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. 

When we were going back to our house, we realized that we made the biggest mistake ever: we forgot to refill the gas tank. Of course if we were near a city, we could just go to a nearby gas station and fill up there, but sadly not everything is that easy. We were driving through the middle of nowhere with no modern civilization in sight (literally). The nearest gas station was miles away, and our car was running out of gas, quick! Next thing we know, we're stuck on the side of the road, with the only thing near us being an old village. Since we had no cell service as we were, well, in the middle of nowhere, the only choice we had was to go into the village for help. When we went into the village, it reminded me and my family of the life we had before we became billionaires. The villagers had no phones, small houses, no fancy, unreliable cars. They were just living a simple and quiet life, away from the rest of the world. When we were examining the village, we realized how connected they were with the nature around them, and also how disconnected we were from it, too. 

When we got to the village, we asked the villagers if they knew where we were. The villagers just looked at us. We asked again. The villagers didn’t even speak a single word. It was like we were speaking a foreign language to them. Instead of trying to waste more time trying to ask them where in the world we were, we cut straight to the point and asked them if they could help our car run again. They were at first confused about what we were showing them, but after some time, they realized what it was and bolted back to their cabins like they had done this before. When they came back, they were holding over 15 gallons of oil. We thanked them and grabbed the gallons of oil like little ants. We poured the oil carefully into the gas tank until it was full. Before leaving though, we asked the mysterious villagers one more question: “How did you get the oil?” The villagers directed us to multiple petroleum wells. They explained that after they discovered that there was a humongous petroleum reserve right underneath where they were living, they decided to harvest it to help people like us who run out of gas while driving through. We were still a little bit confused about how this tiny village even knew what petroleum was, but we thanked them once again before finally leaving. 

After this terrible trip, our family learned a ton of things, like to never go to Disney World ever again. But in all seriousness, we realized that there’s so much more to the world than just cars, money, and Disney. We were so disconnected that we forgot how to navigate the real world. We were so rich that instead of cherishing the things we already had, we just wanted more and more, without realizing that we already have enough. When we were dirt poor, we would’ve loved to have at least a quarter of the things we have now. But the richer we got, the more entitled and greedy we became. We soon became our own enemies. Instead of trying to help others, we just became more selfish. There’s so much more to the world than money, and you don’t need to be rich, or have extravagant items to live a happy and healthy life. Sometimes the simplest things in life are the best.