You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Power Ball.
$2 dollars buys one ticket and a dream.
Match all 6 numbers and the pay off is 300 million dollars. That’s the kind of money Mark Zuckerburg keeps on the night stand. But it’s the kind of money that would make you and me stupid drunk on life.
I bought my ticket Saturday afternoon. I put it in my wallet. I know that mathematically I have a 70-million in one chance of winning. Secretly I know there is a better chance of the Easter Bunny changing my oil at Jiffy Lube. Basically I know that there’s a better chance of doing body shots off Justin Beeber’s chest, than there is of winning.
Well at least the school kids benefit from my addiction, right.
Man I love that moment, when the clerk takes my 2 dollars and pushes the magic power ball button on the machine.
It’s like that first shot of tequila South of the Border. It just speaks to me
I love the sound of the paper printing – and the smell of the new ink. It’s the smell of money.
I love the computer generated randomness that spits and spews out a yellow and black piece of paper.
I like to look at it for a moment, and try and memorize the Powerball number. The Powerball number is the key to unlocking the riches of the universe. In my case the number is 5. I think about 5 for a moment. 5 is a good Powerball number. It is the number of Joe Dimaggio and Donovan McNabb and it represents how many fingers I have on one hand. Yeah 5 will do.
But one powerball number won’t do it alone. You need to match 6 numbers. Match them all and life changes in a moment. Match all 6 and people will bow down to you.
5 – 19- 26- 3- 33 -05
Hmmm. 2 fives. One at the beginning of the ticket and one at the end. That is odd and represents something special in my mind. It’s quirky. It will make a nice story to tell the gathered press while I hold my big ass check and talk about what I was thinking when I first saw my numbers revealed.
I use to play birthdays, special dates and bra sizes I favor, but now-a-days, I just let the computer pick for me. I like the ease and randomness of the universal tumblers of life clicking before me. Too much pressure to remember a series of numbers twice a week.
So after I sniff it, and inspect it like a mint Juliet at the Derby I put the ticket in my wallet. I feel like a cloud of luck is sitting close to my ass. My wallet, my ass, is so powerball hot, so magnetic, I feel everyone in Publix staring at it. I suddenly know what Beyonce feels like at the beach.
I strut out of the store knowing that I am special, that there is an Aura of luck floating around me like Dorothy’s ruby red shoes.
I think about winning. If all 6 numbers hit, life changes in an instant.
No more anxiety looking inside the mailbox. No more stress when the phone rings and that random 1-800 number from Peoria shows up in your call window.
Match all six numbers and you get paid, handsomely, as if Zeus came down from Olympus himself selling Cartier watches out of the back of his chariot.
Suddenly, you have no financial worries. You can roll a wheel barrow into the Maserati dealership and drive away like a modern day Jed Clampett.
Boats, cars, vacation homes. All of it possible. Simply with a slip of paper now in my wallet resting against my ass. I love that my ass controls the portal to my future.
So could I win? Sure. I have as much chance as anyone. 70 million to 1. Usually its 35 steel workers from Omaha all gathered at a podium smirking uncontrollably. But I think I have as much chance as anyone.
I will spend the rest of Saturday day with optimism. I won’t harp on the fact that I have a chance, but it’s a good feeling, like that extra tic tac you find in the container that you thought was empty.
I don’t make it a point to watch the drawing. I usually check the next day. I don’t want to mess up a perfectly good Saturday night with all the air hissing out of my life balloon.
It’s now Sunday morning and I go to powerball.com
I begin to look.
I always wonder, what if…
What if the first number on the web site matches the first number on my ticket.
What if the 2nd number matches, then the third and so on.
Will I jump for joy like a Laker Girl doing a lap dance for Steven Tyler in front of 18,000?
I quickly see that there is no 5 to start the dream.
Yikes.
I lose on the very first peek.
Game. Set. Match. Dream over!
I see the Maserati rolling back into the dealership, I see the vacation home being blown away in a hurricane. The dream ends and the piece of paper that was sitting in my back pocket all night is suddenly not worth the paper it is printed on. I will use it later to hold some wadded up gum.
The powerball web site indicates that 2.7 million people won. From a few dollars to a few thousand dollars.
Good for them. Bad for me.
According to the power ball web site one lucky winner from Rhode Island won 300 million dollars.
What a life changing announcement.
300 million dollars.
One ticket. Now the question is, is it a consortium of people from the steel mill or one lucky bastard who will stand at the podium and tell us how he’s still going to work Monday.
Guys who say that are Chumps.
This is the guy who buys hookers and bad land deals and squanders 300 million dollars and 20/20 does an expose on him 10 years from now and he is destitute and wearing a prison tat on his neck.
Fool.
Anyway, the good news is, the jackpot is all ready reset at 40 million. It’s not exactly 300 million, but it ain’t chump change either. And so the dream begins to build steam again. Wednesday, the next drawing, and my ass will once again house the lucky aura of possibilities and dreams that might be.
and that my friends is crazy.