Winning The Lottery

I’m mad: ranting, raving, flaming mad. I just checked my lottery ticket and I did not win. Now this outcome is no different from every other week in the past twenty-five years, but this time I just knew things were going to change. This time I was going to win
You know how you get this feeling that the stars are finally aligning in your favor? The feeling that the days of bad luck are over, and easy street is the place where you are going to spend the rest of your life? You know that feeling? Well don’t despair, I didn’t either until the day before yesterday.
On Monday I bought four lottery tickets: two for the Mega Millions, and two for the Powerball. I stopped buying lottery tickets several months ago when I looked at my retirement investments and figured that my four-dollar a week gambling addiction was going to break me if I did not get a handle on it soon.
The lottery powers to be must have sensed my departure, because they came up with a new way to pull me back. They added the Powerball to their mile long list of lotteries you can put your cash into and buy a few moments of hope.
I was good, really good, because I resisted the temptation of instant wealth for over two weeks. And for those cynics among you, it wasn’t just because the snow kept me from getting out my driveway and down to the corner store. I could have walked those three miles through four-foot drifts if I had wanted to.
Anyway, after I bought the tickets I stuffed them in my wallet and went home. I needed to get something out of the basement, and as I was walking by the mound of accumulations my wife and I should have thrown away years ago, there on the top of one of the smaller peaks was this little book titled The Good Luck Book.
I turned it over and there on the back cover the first words were, “Want to win the lottery? Sprinkle nutmeg over your lottery tickets.”
Now my wife already thinks I’m a nutcase, so she said very little when I took out the two tickets and started grating fresh nutmeg all over them.
Yesterday I dusted the Mega Millions ticket off and checked to see if I won. With not one of the numbers matching, I figured that the Powerball ticket might need a little more seasoning.
This morning I checked the Powerball. When I told my wife we didn’t win, she suggested I use paprika the next time.