As I have written several times in the past, I’m a faithful and regular customer of the lottery. With every ticket purchased, I’m poised on the balcony of wealth. Sometimes it’s unimaginable wealth, sometimes just a few million. It’s always with a degree of torment to hear about someone in Ohio or Wisconsin, or most recently in Michigan, that bought the winning ticket, be it a ticket for Powerball or Mega-Millions, or just a scratch ticket. They’re quoted on the news, saying “I don’t usually buy tickets. I was just walking by the 7Eleven, and it was a spontaneous thing.” Are you kidding me? They shouldn’t tell me that, at least out loud. There was the story in the news years back of the lady that bought a lottery ticket – yes, a single ticket, mind you, in Florida while on vacation. It won, of course, and the reporter mentioned the irony of – get this – her driving her Rolls Royce back to Florida to collect her winnings. Did she need that? I’m thinking . . . . Then there are the repeat winners. The people that had a million-dollar scratch ticket two years ago and, how delightful, just got another one. Bought at the same store somewhere out in rural Oklahoma or Arkansas, although now they live in Palm Springs. Now that’s just God laughing at me.
For those new readers unaware of the family dynamic, Her Ladyship, my wife is the Household Chief of Staff, dispensing wisdom and authority from her chair in the living room. While I may fancy myself in the role of Captain of our ship, I have no illusions about where the power really lives. The Princess, daughter, resides in Boston while completing her doctorate, exerting control via text, daily phone calls, and thought control like “sands through an hourglass.” Thus are the Days of our Lives. But I digress once again.
As my faithful readers also know, I have for many years participated in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. The arrival of my big check remains but a dream, even though I’ve been perfecting and refining my look of surprise and delight as they pull up and ring the doorbell. (They tell you to do that because it makes for exciting television, so I’m ready.) Notifications have come that I’ve been in the Preferred Presidential Platinum Circle, which I do think has given me a decided leg up, but to no avail. Arrival dates have come and gone. They also know where I live because the address has shown up on multiple winning map locations. I was feeling really confident until a few years back, when a neighbor’s packages were delivered to me by mistake – three purchases from PCH. Just great. She’s out-buying me and her street address is right near mine. She’ll totally confuse the film crew. The truck will pull up, I’ll have a heart attack, and it’ll turn out they’re just looking for her. (She does look rather frail, so perhaps I can wrestle that big check away from her.) So, for the time being, I’ll have to content myself with the new egg slicer, the deluxe spoon rest with matching dish towels, and avocado gouger.
My luck has held true to form in the HGTV Dream House drawing as well. There were a couple of very nice locations in New England and the Northeast that would have worked for us. An attractive little eight bedroom, solar-powered bungalow on Martha’s Vineyard with heated window seats and a kitchen that looked like a much larger version of “Chopped”, would be very nice. Yes, I can see myself on the deck with my morning coffee and newspaper. “Kicking back” is, I believe the expression currently used. In the last few years, their model homes are in the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, or a Southern bayou. (Full disclosure, I’m not a big fan of alligators, or southerners for that matter.) Something on a safe coast, like Maine, would do very nicely. I’ve written a letter to David about participating in “My Lottery Dream Home”, but sadly, have not had the winnings or the occasion to send it.
I invest in the lottery on a regular basis. Keeping track, I could probably deduct hundreds on my taxes, which I, of course, don’t. My tickets of choice are for a three-state lotto. Its jackpots are much smaller than the national ones, but certainly enough for me to purchase my Bentley and a small seaside residence for Her Ladyship. Or perhaps we could, following that show from the UK, “Escape to the Country”, we could buy a small country cottage overlooking the magnificent countryside while periodically popping in to the local pub, the Gin and Grouse, or stopping for fish and chips in the village. Yes, that would work. Her Ladyship prefers scratch tickets, because she loves the game. And I have to admit that she’s done pretty well on them – a ten or twenty dollar win here and there, sometimes more. Over the course of the holidays, though, the Princess announced that she’d like to become a large-scale philanthropist, and that a few measly million wouldn’t set her up properly. What she really requires, she’s told me, after making generous donations to friends and family, along with a lavish penthouse with sweeping views of Boston Harbor that befits her new status, is tens, neigh hundreds of millions. That would really allow her to set up endowments and charitable trusts of real significance and show that she is fully committed to acts of charity. The Princess would then become a benefactress on the scale of Oprah Winfrey, or the British Royal Family, or that lady with silver hair on PBS. She could rule over the Elizabeth Foundation, or as I call it, the Trust of Unbridled Greed. She could become an activist for change, invest in major motion pictures, her true passion, and bankroll the extermination of house plants, which is her ambition here at home.
And so, the wait goes on. Four dollars this week, and a ten-dollar scratch ticket, which covers about a quarter of our investment. It’s a start. It keeps the flame alive, the anticipation building. Just so you know, I don’t plan to spend lavishly, just tasteful elegance. Nobody will know that we’ve come into big money. Ok, maybe the new, shiny Range Rover in the driveway could give just a hint. When we disappear for a few winter months to our little getaway in Belize, that might suggest something. But for now, I’ll continue to exist on my pension and the ad revenue pouring in from my humble blog. Oh, wait . . . As I said, four dollars to reinvest. Lotto or scratch ticket? A true dilemma for the ages.
I'm Thinking...No! 