You May Already Be A Winner

Everyone's talking about the Powerball. It's a big one, I'm told, in the neighborhood of 380 million doll-hairs, as we say in this family. Don't ask me why we call it doll-hairs. It's a deeply-held family secret. So secret no one remembers the origins of this particular mula-related silliness. Except maybe my brother John, and if he does, I'll get an email later, telling me the exact time and place when the expression "doll-hairs" was first uttered, most likely by him. It may have something to do with receiving our paltry weekly allowance for doing unnecessary chores around the house. Chores were character-building, according to my dad. In fact, everything we didn't want to do was character-building. But let's get back to the lottery, shall we, and all those doll-hairs up for distribution. To land this big-ass pot o' gold, all you have to do is buy a ticket at your local convenience store, although what's convenient about these places, I'll never understand. They're often located in weird mini-malls. You take your life in your hands just trying to back up in their cramped parking lots. They're often filled with questionable folks, agonizing over which beef jerky goes best with their Schlitz Malt Liquor. Not that I judge.

My lack of desire to frequent the birthplace of Slurpees and beer nuts --snacks that would only appeal to me in an altered state, a state I haven't visited since that traumatic edible incident in the early '80s -- probably explains why the thought of purchasing a lottery ticket would simply never occur to me. I have never bought one in my life. Why is that? Am I already a winner? Is that how I see myself? Uh, no. If that were true, I'd be less neurotic and more confident in general. Clearly, high self-esteem isn't the reason I've never purchased a lottery ticket.

Maybe I just prefer to defer to the other potential winners in my immediate vicinity. Why not piggyback off their win? Hubby and the eldest are all about the lottery tickets. Hubby is always part of some "if we win, we'll split it 32 ways" arrangement at the office. The eldest thrives on lottery-inspired fantasies, too. Much like his father, he'd rather work for himself, as opposed to "all the idiots and morons who run things." Well, no wonder they both want to win the lottery. They share a dream of permanent, generously-subsidized unemployment. I figure, if either of them wins, they'll give me my well-deserved share. So please, if you're any kind of person at all, wish them a lotto luck, on my behalf.