Another day, another failure. Bob wondered if all this trouble could be traced back to his name. Bob. Plain, pushover, doormat, Bob. He flipped through the pages of his portfolio seeing picture after picture of unanticipated happiness.

    Judith, after being laid off from a job she’d held a whopping eight years, drowned her sorrows in a wild night of too much alcohol and not enough protection. Single-unemployed-motherhood beckoned. It should have been enough to make poor Judith bargain away her soul for a moment of relief. Instead, Raul came charging into her life and helped her build the family she’d always dreamed of with her cute dumpling of an infant. No demon-strings attached.

    Kaleb bet over 80 million of his clients’ investment capital into a friend’s company. It’s a sure thing his friend promised. Can’t go wrong. But boy did it go belly up. Not only did Kaleb lose his job, but his email, snail-mail, and voicemail filled with hate mail on the hour, every hour. Enough to crush any man’s spirit 80 million times over. But Kaleb managed to find happiness between the gears of an 1966 Mustang Convertible, rehabbing the classic back to mint condition, disconnecting from the modern world, and cruising around the country top-down.

    Taylor cheated on his wife and fled the nasty divorce for a life of leisure on beautiful Brazilian beaches, where thieves stole all his belongings and identifying information. His ex-wife disappeared, his mother passed away, and his Harvard-bound kid refused to speak to him. Alone in the world for the first time in four decades, it should have been easy for Bob to extract his pound of flesh. Instead, Taylor surrendered his soul to surfing. He’s living out his days as a beach bum chasing the wildest waves the world has to offer. Worry-free.

    And just today, Lindsay became yet another example of Bob’s failure. An angry teenage girl, she ran away from home after her parents divorced and began her new life of theft and cocaine on the streets of Seattle. Police arrested poor Lindsay, after finding her standing over the body of her only friend. She didn’t murder her of course, but she had no way to prove her innocence, and no one believes a junky. Then today, just as she picked up the pen to sign her soul over to Bob, the damn fool murderer entered the police station, confessed his crime, and begged forgiveness. The police released Lindsay to the loving care of her parents, soul intact.

    It was all too much. Bob’s demonic-possessions successfully destroyed lives and fortunes, incinerating hope and happiness. Yet against all odds, he had not harvested a single soul. All he had was a book of new beginnings and rediscovered joy. Disgusted, he tossed the portfolio into the fireplace. As he watched the surging flames curl around the pages and pictures, he noticed a small golden post-it clinging to the cover. Bob, I have a proposal for you.