My husband and I used to be a bit of what you’d call “Lottery Snobs.”
Before you think that we’re multi-millionaires living the high life, let me clarify.
We buy lottery tickets for the Mega Millions and Powerball. But for a long time, we only did it when the jackpot got up to over $100 million.
You know, when it’s the worst time to buy them because our odds on winning are the worst.
I think they become like a gazillion to one.
Often, folks will say in the media that you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning a big jackpot in the lottery.
Well, I actually know two people who have been struck by lightning and lived to tell about it. One was even struck twice!
As you can imagine, I would check the totals on lottery billboards as I was driving. “Is it over $100 million yet?” If it were, I’d go buy a ticket.
We would check with each other to see what the total was. Only $12 million? “Could we even live off that?” we’d joke.
Um, yes. If you’re listening, God, we can totally live off that. Really.
One day, I said to my husband that if the odds were much better when the lottery amount was lower, it might be smart for us to buy a ticket then too.
Of course, we might need to sacrifice if we won—we would have to take only one month-long trip aboard per year. But we think we could handle that.
Before you berate me for buying tickets in the first place, let me clarify again: $1 or $2 buys a whole lot of hope. It’s more entertaining for us than many television shows.
Because we don’t just buy lottery tickets, folks; we imagine what we will do when we win.
We probably talk about the same things that many of you ticket buyers do. We would pay off our bills, help out our friends, splurge on something, give to charities we support, and then put the rest away.
We talk about what trips we will take, what places we want to see around the world, and the places we definitely will not visit.
I, sadly enough, will also go to the nearest Staples and buy myself tons of office supplies in pretty colors.
I already do this when I buy supplies that I need, but after I win the lottery, I’ll buy all of them, and I won’t even look at the prices.
Unlike many people, though, I won’t stop working.
I’m being totally serious.
I am so!
You’ll never know because I’ll still be writing my columns.
My topics may change, though. For example, instead of writing about funny things that happened in my yard, I might write about funny things that happened to me on my latest trip to London and France (only because I know I could work in the rhyming word “underpants”).
Or I could write about how, no matter what anyone tells you, all caviar is not the same.
I might even write about what it’s like to be a civilian who has gone up into space.
Then, you may get the idea that something has changed for me financially. But I’ll never tell.
I have to stop writing now and go buy a ticket.
I figure that if I can have a friend who has been struck by lightning twice and lived, I have good enough odds of winning a bazillion dollars.
At least I hope I do…
Michele Wojciechowski, who gets a dreamy look in her eyes when she thinks about shopping without looking at the prices (And who is she kidding? We all know that she’d look anyway!), writes “Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore.