“Who wants to be a millionaire?” I’ve been asking myself that question ever since I saw the hit TV show “Greed.” Or maybe it was “Twenty-one.” Or “Winning Lines.” It doesn’t really matter. The point is, after pondering this question for many moons, I came to the conclusion that everybody wants to be a millionaire.

But then I pondered the question for a couple more moons and realized that there are some people who don’t want to be millionaires: professional athletes. They want to be multimillionaires.

Can you really blame them? Athletes are very special people with very special needs. They need to carry exorbitant amounts of money at all times.

Take the case of Colorado Rockies second baseman Mike Lansing. According to the Associated Press, last month he and his wife were mugged and lost over $40,000. Yes, that means he was walking around with over $40,000 in his pocket (probably not in singles). And he’s not even very good.

But a number of situations could arise on any given night when an athlete might suddenly need $40,000. What if their car runs out of gas? They may need to buy a new one. And what if they suddenly need to make 571,434 minutes of state-to-state long distance calls on 10-10-220? That’s $40,000 right there.

Plus, we all know the hotel rooms filled with cocaine and hookers that so many of today’s top athletes require aren’t cheap. How embarrassing would it be for an athlete if he were arrested for beating his girlfriend again and he didn’t have enough cash on hand to bail himself out of jail? He’d be the laughingstock of the league.

But aside from pro athletes, I think most of us would be happy just to be millionaires. I know I would be. In fact, some day I’ll have to be a millionaire; Iowa State is counting on it.

Just last week the university sent me a real check that I could use for real money. I didn’t work for this money, they just gave it to me out of the goodness of their heart. Unfortunately, I have been told by a number of unconfirmed sources that these checks I keep receiving are merely loans and I have to pay back the money when I get out of school.

This gives me two options: Become a millionaire and pay them back, or stay in school for the rest of my life. Staying in school may seem tempting, but I just can’t stand the thought of having to read whiny letters about religion and homosexuality in the Daily for the next 60 years.

But as long as I am here, I will continue to receive loans from the school, the government, Mr. Perkins, Mr. Stafford and whomever else wants to send me money.

Naturally when I get these checks, I am tempted to spend the money on hotel rooms full of cocaine and hookers, but every semester I have to spend that money on books instead.

This wouldn’t be a problem if the bookstore would just give me a decent amount of money for the books when I sell them back at the end of every semester. But somehow over the course of four months, all my textbooks lose approximately 98 percent of their original value, despite the fact that many of them are in mint condition, some still in the original cellophane wrapping.

Also, in what is quickly becoming a semiannual event, the bookstore wouldn’t even buy back one of my books. But I can’t just throw away a book I paid $40 for, so I just add it to my growing collection of out-of-date textbooks.

I don’t know why I hang on to these things. I never read most of them when I was actually in the classes, so there is no way I’ll ever read them now.

Maybe I’m just hanging on to them so that if I become president of the United States some day, I’ll have something to donate to the Peter M. Borchers Presidential Library.

Even though the bookstores rip us off with the book buy back, we continue to go back and buy our books there so they can rip us off again. But that’s not going to happen to me this semester.

I’ve developed a plan that will revolutionize the way students purchase books and I’ve modeled it after the method bookstores use to buy books from us. Here’s the plan:

I’ve notified the bookstores that I am holding Book Buying Days all this week. For this event, I will have a folding table set up in my living room where I will be waiting to purchase books from the bookstores.

The bookstore people will then have to drive out to my house with the books they wish to sell, expecting me to pay them a fair price. I will scan these books into my computer which will tell me that the books are worth well over $400. This will make me laugh as I give the bookstore $22.50, a couple Book Buy Back Bucks (not good on books), a free sample size stick of Right Guard and validated parking.

So hurry in bookstores! Now is your best time to sell. I’ll be here waiting, and waiting, and waiting…

---

Peter Borchers is a senior in advertising from Bloomington, Minn. No bookstores have shown up yet, but he’s confident they will come.