The Lottery

THE LOTTERY


        There comes a time, not very often, but once in a great while, you just wake up with an intense thought, feeling, or impression that you just have to do a certain thing. It was that way for me one Saturday morning. I arose bleary eyed, my first thought pressing strong upon me. I had to buy a Lotto ticket. I knew, that I knew, that I knew, I would win, if I purchased that slip of paper this day
.        The day trickled along, filled with all the weekend home chores of a single man working construction on the road. Laundry, grocery shopping, and some dire needed cleaning topped the list. Somehow, through my three trips to various stores I had forgotten to buy a ticket. Yet, every time I remembered, I knew that I would win.
        The Jackpot was an estimated thirty-six million, in a day that made it much larger than it seems today. I knew, that I knew, it would be mine. Finally, with about fifteen minutes left to purchase a ticket, I walked to the local corner store and bought my future endowment. I bought one quick pick ticket which is where the machine chooses the numbers for you.
        So convinced that I would win, I called a close female friend told her I was about to win the lottery and invited her over. We then spent the evening and far into the night making exorbitant plans on how we would wake up, have breakfast in Rio, lunch in Paris, and dinner in New York. We talked and played cards until the wee hours, dreams and plans mixing and merging into far fetched fantasies.
        It was here at this point, I suffered yet another epiphany, three words like a bolt of lighting coursed through my brain! They are just three little words in the English language, but words that flowed so well together, they could not help but cause tingles in the most hardened of media catch phrase junkies. Words, that also have no rational reason for ever being strung together in a coherent statement or thought, unless of course, you are an American politician and thereby beyond rational. Words, so perfectly fitted for American social strata as to rival the most popular catch phrase of our present political climate, Weapons of Mass Destruction.
        My three words of enlightened consciousness were, and are, in my opinion, just as obscene but far more benevolent. These three words came to me like a vision, nah I say, not like a vision, but as a vision! It was a vision of wealth! It was a vision of easy wealth! It was a vision of thirty-six million U.S. Greenbacks, unearned and un-sweated for! A vision of my winnings, all in neat stacks of crisp, newly minted bills. It was all before my eyes! These three powerful words ringing through my head were… Personal Luxury Submarine!
      Yes indeed, I would spend my winnings responsibly. I would buy a personal luxury submarine, with matching island of course. I began planning the stereo system. The loudspeakers, I would naturally mount on the hull's interior panels in order to share my music with the oceanic world. We began crunching numbers for the percentages on international submariners and shore based sonar station operators worldwide, that would enjoy a steady diet of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. Now enlightened with this new nautical course of action, we were even more eager for the Sunday paper's delivery.
        The paper promptly arrived on the doorstep at 5:00 am. We two caffeine-dosed red-liners, left that poor newspaper delivery boy quite startled and shocked, as we quickly snatched the paper immediately from his hands as he approached my doorstep. Quickly stripping the paper down to the Metro section, my pretty companion found and read the winning numbers aloud, “Fifteen.” she said. “Got it,” I stated a matter-of-factly. I repeated that phrase for the next five numbers she read. Well, when the recital concluded, I had five of the six numbers. I had indeed won the lottery! She was cosmically blown away by the results. Me? I was disappointed, having matched only five of the six numbers. There goes my submarine and other responsible necessities I thought. I did feel however, that five of six numbers on thirty-six million would certainly provide a substantial yield, so I was not completely unhappy.
        We then drank even more coffee, as we waited for the lotto machines to become active in another two to three hours. Our plans took on a much less grandiose flavor, but they were adventurous dreams nonetheless. Perhaps something as humble and mundane, as a rarely used sixty-foot sailing yacht would have to suffice.
        When the time came, we rushed down to the corner store like children. Giggling and laughing together, we were living in the moment. Completely enveloped in the joy, that can only come when the end of one's life struggles and hard times are finally conquered.
        We waited as the machine slowly consumed and scanned the ticket. The ticket, we were informed by the unimpressed clerk, yielded exactly thirty-six dollars. I was one out of over eleven hundred and fifty other winners splitting that second place prize, so much for submarines and sailboats.  She and I laughed then hugged when we realized, we were still comfortable struggling, and knowing that we had to go to work the next day. We left the store agreeing that breakfast in Rio was on hold. So we went and had all the breakfast specials at Denny’s, and called it a day.





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