Oh Lottery, Oh Lottery

Every week, twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday I go through the same ritual. On the way home from work, I stop at my favorite convenience/gas mart and stand in line with $2.00 in hand to purchase that elusive winning lottery ticket. As I plunk that hard earned legal tender on the counter, the clerk smiles and hits the touch screen to send the code through the computer and print the tickets. I make it home and secure the marker near the coffee cups in that special cabinet in the kitchen, as if it were the bullion vault at Fort Knox.

I haven’t seized a pirate’s sized bounty over the years, maybe $10.00 at tops, but I keep thinking that according to the odds someday my ship will come in. Unfortunately my ship has been a rowboat minus an oar. Those guys in Somalia have a better win percentage than I have seen.

I looked hard at my ticket today before placing it in the safe and posed a question to myself. What criterion does God deem fit to determine who wins those millions and millions of dollars? A heart filled prayer? I know my creditors would be down on their knees with eyes shut tight, folded hands and even humming a Gregorian chant if that would help. A promise to donate upward of 15% to His favorite charity or church? Pardon the expression, but that is one hell of a offering to place in the basket.

Do I need to help an old lady cross the street? Stop kicking the cat when he bites my toe in the middle of the night? No problem. I have nine other little piggies to let him nibble on. Become a vegetarian? How about if I apply for PETA membership or worse yet, the ACLU?

I sense that God wishes to remain neutral in my proposed stimulus plan. Perhaps I should seek help from the occult. Hang a crystal from my neck and mix a potion to dab in the upper left hand corner of the ticket. Eye of newt, hair of toad, ground rhino horn. Wait, that concoction works for other purposes. Back to the drawing board.

Numerology, bumps on the head - thump, thump, thump - tea leaves, palm reading, trances, séances, induced comas. I’ll explore them all for the chance to cash in on the glorious jackpot.

It would be nice to win that prize, but all I would really want is a little cabin in the woods.