In desperate times, comes faulty measures

Reaching deep into my jeans from last week, I found it--that lingering dollar. I wrapped my fingers around it in glee. In the darkness, I turned around and dug blindly through my drawer for a flashlight. Feeling over to the right, I paw it on my bedstand. Click on-- swoop through the second drawer, full of pennies that will never be used, I took great detail in not disturbing my silent, sleeping roommate. Like a grave of copper is how I can describe that drawer. A home for scraps of receipts and the occasional scribbled doctors prescription, I was now digging through this whirlwind mess of spent money and money never to be spent to find that silver gold. A nickel, a quarter, a--dime, glee! A dime dropped down from an old folded brochure for whatever organization may have tried to peddle into my liking. But a dime! I was 15 cents sort of that cranberry raspberry minute maid drink that my tounge and its fellow tastebuds desired. I had the pennies, an unsurmountable amount of copper lying there idle, Abe looking the other way just to spite me. A snort, I turn to the short unconscious outburst of my fellow roomie. And on his bedstand was a cup containing unused Mardi Gras beads, old ID's and the dark shiny quarter I desired. Yet, how could I pull off such a bonanza? I stared and pondered, ever creaking closer with my back bent slightly and my head cocked upwards. I reached, yet it was too far. I look and he is asleep, but what if this was a stunt! What if he was really awake, fully awake, and noticing my ever devious moves towards his pot of silver gold? I shifted to the left trying to find an angle, one hopefully removed from his decreased eyesight due to his slitted eyelids. I reach--but to no avail. His knees kick up and I suck in what is my gut deep until it feels as though my insides straddle my spinal cord. I hang my head in shame as he snores on, unconsciously safeguarding his treasures away from the bandit that sulks in the darkness. In a final attempt to buy that cold, frosty drink from the vending machine for $1.25 I search denyingly in the dark with my flashlight. Click off-- I walk out to the water fountain and hang my shameful head to sip the spouting tap water.