Thursday, April 5, 2012

We didn't win.


We didn't win the 640 MILLION dollar jackpot. We thought we might. We bought tickets. For the first time. Ever. We played the lottery for the first time in our lives. Paul Bunyan turns 40 in August. I'm right on his tail. That's almost 80 years (combined) of NOT playing the lottery and that's, you know, that's a lot of NOT participating.

And if there is one thing that I'm teaching my kids to do, it's to play! At our local Shaw's they were giving away (!) over 15 MILLION dollars in prizes. We just collected our Wish Big Win Big game pieces every time we bought certain foods (the processed and non-organic kind) and then we'd come home and spread out our game sheet and lick and stick our game pieces to their matching pictures. We came very close to winning an I-Pad but we just needed that fucking Whip Creme container. And every time I was at the check-out and the young Nick, or Jane, or Sam who was scanning all my goods would ask, "Are you playing our Wish Big Win Big game," I'd say, "Hellz Yes, you can't win IF YOU DON'T PLAY." And the kids would chuckle and know that they actually had already won anyway because I just bought FOUR boxes of Frosted Flakes to get double the number of game pieces.

We didn't win...anything.

So last Friday when all the craziness was swirling around this WORLD RECORD jackpot Paul Bunyan went down to our country store and said, "Uh Linda, how do I do this?" We picked birthdays and ages and I went to my journal to find out what my crazy psychic palm reader told me were my lucky numbers and we bought 5 tickets. And somewhere out there in the world someone was yelling at me, "YOU HAVE A GREATER CHANCE OF GETTING HIT BY LIGHTNING!" And I yelled back, "YOU GOTTA PLAY TO WIN BITCH!" and then I added, "AND I DON'T PLAY OUTSIDE WHEN I HEAR THUNDER!"

Well, when the kids heard about how we had a SLIGHT chance of winning 640 MILLION dollars they started dreaming about what they would buy. There were I-Pads, I-Pods, I-Phones being passed around like candy, Wii, an art studio (Claire), 4-wheelers and dirt bikes (Timmy), a 5 story tree house with a hot tub in it (Auggie), a brand new speed boat (Paul Bunyan) AND a 50 foot sailboat (Paul Bunyan). All I said I wanted was a new bathroom. That's really not too much to ask for. Oh, and a house in Telluride. We shook hands about paying off friends' mortgages and buying pop-campers for them. It was like we had already won. And then we danced.

Yea, we didn't win. Someone won though- actually three people did except we don't know who they are yet. And so when it's all said and done they'll get like only a little over a million dollars, or something like that, after taxes and that's, like, chump change. Or something like that. I'm not really a Mega Million lottery super star so I don't really understand it so well. I won't pretend to.


Paul Bunyan bought the kids a few "scratch" off game cards as well last Friday. Claire took home $20. He tried to get her to reinvest it into 20 more tickets. She said, "uhm, no." I'm not sure what she is planning on spending her winnings on (candy) but she knew enough to get out while she was ahead. And that's a tough thing to teach with this betting thing. I mean you gotta bet big to win big, and you gotta wish big to win big, and for god's sake you gotta play to win.

So, can we pool our money next time?

3 comments:

  1. Maybe next time......

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  2. I love this post haha! We played one set of special numbers, a whole bunch of random picks and then used another significant number to determine quantity...crazy methods, poor results - we also did not win. Until the next one...

    -Susie

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  3. bewary of 4-8-15-16-23-42....

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