OLIVER! The Musical adapted from the Charles Dickens novel with book and music by Lionel Bart

So it’s Tax Season, Everyone. I thought I would post a blog using my entry for April 15 in my Theatre Is My Life! book (available on Amazon). The photograph is from Samford University Theatre’s 1978 production of Oliver!

In “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” from Oliver!, Fagin sings about figuring out ways to get untaxed wages through his petty thievery. (Listen to the work online or from your library!)

Fagin in Oliver! adapted from the Charles Dickens novel with book and music by Lionel Bart

Oh, how those words of Fagin’s song play in my head today, the deadline for filing tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service of the United States federal government. I really don’t mind paying my fair share of taxes for safety, Social Security, health insurance programs, national transportation issues, and many of our other public services — although I do wish more of my money went to the National Endowment for the Arts.

Student actor Ed Evins as Fagin in Samford University Theatre’s 1978 production of Oliver!

Finding some extra nontaxable cash is such a stirring idea! Not that I would pick a pocket, let alone two, to get such funding. But a nice benefactor who contributed the allowable $14,000 gift to my bank account each year would help me so much. And I would do such good with it!

Alas! That is what people say when they buy lottery tickets and wish for the big break. They would have to pay a chunk of taxes on that earning — however, they promise they would save their family, friends, and even the world with what is left. People have a huge desire to fix their lives, and they think money will help that. And truly, money might help a few things, especially if you are in debt. 

But when a hankering for cash meets the fantasy world, you are ripe for buying that lottery ticket. One of my grandmothers, in her later years, was absolutely positive she was going to win the Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes and have the Prize Patrol come to her door. Or she believed she might snag the give-away from American Family Publishers, whose spokesperson at the time was Ed McMahon. She would show me a packet of cards from American Family, with pictures of the celebrity, and say, “Just look what that sweetheart Ed McMahon has sent me this week!” — as if he were specially keeping up with what she was doing and what she needed. Every time she got a mailing, she bought a “trinket” or two until we finally had to slip the direct marketing envelopes out of her mailbox every time we found them.

Studies have shown that a good number of people who win large sums of money from lotteries and give-aways are fairly miserable afterward. Why? Because if my life is a mess to begin with, if I hate my family, if I don’t have friends, or if I believe happiness comes from outside rather than inside me, then money is only going to exaggerate how far I am down the wrong path.

So no matter how much on this day of all days I wish to have a little untaxed income, I would be better served by sitting down to a deep reverie, thinking of how many riches I have in my life and how my happiness can well up from within when I count my many blessings.