Lessons from Death and the 1.5 Bazillion Dollar Powerball Jackpot

Hello, Sunday. Thanks for being the start of a new week. Last week was nearly indecipherable, so please be clearer.

Here's a start on what I learned last week. Death and Dreams go together is maybe the paramount lesson. It was a week that cost us David Bowie and Alan Rickman, both heroes of mine in about equal measure, but neither of them young men. They both had good runs, if abbreviated. Four years ago, the second week in January took my father, who was also my hero and had lived a good deal longer than the 69 years apiece Bowie and Rickman had.

Anyhow, last week started off with the usual comfy read of the Sunday paper (still reading it in hardcopy, delivered to the sidewalk in front of the house, thanks). I checked my lottery numbers and sure enough, was not wealthy. Once a month I buy tickets for the Colorado Lottery, which doesn't break the bank and every so often I even win a few bucks back. Because the Powerball jackpot was high, I had also bought a Powerball ticket and sure enough, they weren't winners. But I noticed that nobody else had won, either. This meant the Powerball jackpot was certain to be over a gazillion bazillion bucks. Chances of winning were as astronomically low as ever, but still...

Knowing that there's strength in numbers, I started texting some buddies. Howz about if we each pony up 20 dollars? That's ten tickets apiece. In short order, I had seven people in. By the morning of the drawing, our number was nine. Ninety tickets. I collected the money in an envelope, and took my place in line at the grocery story, which was long enough to have a good chat with a fellow Powerball gambler about what we'd do if we won. I was trying to focus on philanthropy, because somehow I feel guilty about playing; she was all about a sexy car.

But dreams are why I play the Powerball in this fair-weather way, only when the jackpot is astronomically high. Because it's fun to think about what I'd do. I'd pay off all the bills, sure. I'd foot the bill for some big family reunions in fabulous locales. I'd pay for college for a lot of people. And I'd live somewhere, at least part of the time, where my skin and hair weren't dry as dust and we could get up in the morning and smell gardens and trees. I could tell stories for a living, full time. Two years and one month away from 60 years old, all of this sounds pretty good. I'm just a little over a decade younger than David Bowie and Alan Rickman. I'm not looking over my shoulder at the shrouded, scythe-wielding Grim Reaper, but you never know.

At the counter, the cashier, a young woman from whom I've bought my monthly Colorado Lotto tickets on many occasions, was a little taken aback that I was so profligate. I mean, we're talking 180 dollars, and it was just me standing there. I explained I was in charge of a pool, and she seemed less worried about me. Bless her mildly judgmental heart. But she told me of a woman who'd come in the day before and spent 700 dollars on the Powerball. We agreed that we hoped it was a pool, because that's a crazy amount of money to blow on a lottery game. I mentioned something one of the players I was representing had said: that with a jackpot this high, it's not even so much about winning as it was about participating in a cultural moment. She put the tickets in my hand and I put the money in hers and we wished each other a good day and that was that.

But I had never, never, had that many lottery tickets in my possession. Holy shit, it was a lot of numbers. Seeing them there, all in one place, for a moment I nearly panicked. It was exciting and terrifying in equal parts. True, I had only 20 dollars riding on it, so my life wouldn't change if we won nothing at all. Losing wasn't the scary part. For a short span of time, until I got a grip, I was supremely afraid that we would actually win.

Heart racing just a bit, I went home, scanned the tickets into a pdf, which I emailed to my eight Powerball fellows so they could share in the numbers-checking festivities, and then I locked up the originals. I sat at my desk and thought about my house. And our cars. And my work. And my wife's work. And our dogs. And our neighborhood. And I even thought about my favorite clothes, the old and shabby soft cords and sweaters I wear when I write. And I thought about my home office, which was part of a big painting/recarpeting project of only a month before. And I had a bit of an epiphany.

My life is just fine. Sure, more money would be great. But not the life-changing kind of financial explosion that  would come with winning the Powerball, even when the jackpot's at its lowest point. Everything I have, I love. Everything I love, I have. I don't need more. That lesson was worth a lot more than the 20 bucks I spent.

We won all of 19 dollars. Nobody really wants their slightly-more-than two bucks back, so I'm going to try to lose it all on an upcoming drawing for a much lower stakes lottery game. If we win, we'll probably each get enough to take a nice long weekend away. That's plenty enough for me, as this week's dreams go.