I checked
our Powerball ticket Thursday morning to find out if our lives had changed
overnight. Nope, not one iota. We didn’t get a single number matched, which is
probably a good thing because almost
winning $448 million is even worse than not coming close to winning $448
million. They can keep their hundred bucks; knowing I had four numbers
right would kill me.
They say
the statistics of winning are astronomical, that you’ve got a better chance of
being struck by lightening. Let me just say that I don’t play golf and I’m not
in a boy scout troop, so I think they’re wrong on my lightening chances.
Besides, the proof is in the pudding: somebody
wins and it might as well be me.
I liked one
of the guys who won this latest one. He quit his job immediately and announced
he didn’t want to work for the rest of his life. Now this is a deserving
lottery winner. Not like the ones you hear about from places like North Dakota who
say they’re real happy at their factory job and still plan to keep on working. “I’ll
probably just buy a new pick-up truck,” they say. They should invent a special
lottery for these kinds of people. Perhaps a Schlitz Scratch-off. They could
win a six-pack a week for life. They’d be good to go.
Deserving
winners quit their jobs and overhaul their lives. They take that giant check and sail
around the world. They don’t add on a new deck to their raised ranch house.
They walk away from their home and pick out a mansion…which they’ve driven to
in their new Bugatti…just before getting on a private jet to a Caribbean
island and deciding which oceanfront property to buy there.
Of course,
I feel my husband and I would be the best lottery winners. We only play the
really big jackpots so that we won’t need to hire lawyers and estate planners
and figure out the smartest thing to do with the money. Who wants to bother
being smart? We’d be rich for heaven’s sake! In fact, when my husband heard
there were three winners who had to split the jackpot, he stated, “That
would suck.” That’s the kind of dedicated money spenders we would be. Sure, the
$58 million each of them will get after taxes would be plenty, but we had already
devoted the previous evening to how we were going to spend the full $175 million.
We had planned to be the ultimate Reaganomics couple and allow our good fortune
and hefty spending habits to trickle down.
But, alas,
we didn’t win. Everything that’s good and right with our lives won’t get
chucked aside by the promise of what lots of cash can give us. We won’t get the
chance to suddenly come across a ton of new friends and long-lost relatives. We
won’t even get the opportunity to get seasick sailing around the world. (Did I ever tell you about that whale watching trip? Blech!)
The thing
is, even if we were to have an almost unlimited supply of cash, we'd still be us.
A private jet won’t stop my palms from sweating every time I fly. Living in
Paris won’t make us suddenly like staying out past midnight any more than fancy
restaurants would change my aversion to wearing high heels. A tropical beach
won’t make my husband like the sand any more than he does now and affording a
trip to Aspen won’t make me hate the cold any less.
Now that I
think of it, I’m pretty happy not overhauling our lives. I mean, how
pathetic would it be searching for a TV in Bali so I don’t miss the
final episodes of Big Brother? Maybe we're not the most deserving lottery winners
after all. Maybe we're the New England version of that guy from North Dakota.
Invent a Ben & Jerry’s Scratch-Off ticket and we're good to go.
