Winning The Lottery

I stopped by a convenience store this morning with a pocket full of quarters and saw the headline in the newspaper box that read, “Prince Harry comes into his inheritance”. It seems he has inherited what would be to us a major win at Lotto. Two things usually happen to me when someone wins at Lotto. One, I get physically ill and mentally fatigued thinking of one hundred million ways to spend one hundred million dollars and two… I develop an intense dislike for the person who won in spite of the fact that I don’t know them. So the voice goes off, again, saying, “That dirty Harry, I’ll just bet he had a good day today.” This gave way to the urge to buy my own winning ticket and I listened as “Self” started this persuasive rant saying, “This was Harry’s day, maybe it’s your day too. Somebody has to win, why not you? “Who knows? This store probably hasn’t had a winner in awhile; the odds are probably only ten million to one today. What else are you going to do with all those quarters? You have enough gas in the tank, buy something else.” And on and on she rattled (my self is female when it wants me to buy something) until I gathered up four quarters and walked toward the store entrance. Reaching for the door my other self (the male self and fortunately or not, the one I consult most often) said, “Why not buy a ten million dollar cup of that good flavored, five hundred calorie cappuccino? You won the lottery sixty two years ago!” And in fact I had because that was when my mom and dad decided to have a child who became me. Now I’m not saying they won that day but I know I did and in fact have won several lotteries since. I won in June of 1962 when Mrs. Peacock was there with her car to take me to the hospital after a boating accident. I won again in 1980 when I got married and darned if I didn’t hit it again in 86’ when my daughter was born. There are those who would say the possibility of winning the lottery four times is, well, impossible but I have had other wins as well. I won the day Matt Author told me to go to school to be a teacher and coach. We were playing in a church softball league; I was eighteen and had not one clue as to how I was going to spend the next forty years. That was a Mega-million day for sure. Some of my wins are in the Megabucks category while others are what I consider Fantasy Fives. And when I stop to think about it, none of my wins actually involved money. Oh don’t get me wrong, money makes this ol’ world go round and round for sure and without it we are sometimes want to find “the good life”, but my lotteries have always involved winning in other ways. So while I can appreciate those who continue to support education in our State, I wonder if the idea of winning the monetary lottery is looking on the wrong side of the coin and just makes our lives bigger without making them any better. What would we do with a hundred million dollars? Probably buy something, that’s what money is generally used for. When it just sits in a drawer it becomes like a sock or shirt but can’t be worn. No, money has to be spent to be worth anything. So what would we buy? Something big, bigger than the one we currently own. Food, probably more than we need which would lead to buying bigger clothes, a larger dry cleaning bill and a large depression when we see ourselves in the larger mirror we purchased to accommodate our new large bodies. Or maybe we would just buy a larger view of something we like to look at. So actually, when you think about it, winning the monetary lottery can make things bigger but not necessarily better. I walked on through the door and bought a cup of coffee and two lotto tickets. Figured, well, you know what I figured, “somebody’s got to win the darn thing, Harry did.” Now I’m wondering if I’ll still like myself when I win.