How "I" Won LOTTO

Get the Kleenex ready, this is a painful one.  So I’m up on Cape Cod with my girlfriend visiting her parents.  They’ve retired and we’re staying at their condo in Harwich Port.  Her folks are two of the most laid back people you’ll ever meet.  After retiring, her Dad took up painting and became very good at it.  He sells his work once a week in the summers during “Art in the Park” day.  When he’s not painting, he’s farming a plot of land set aside by the town.  Her Mom’s part of the “Newcomer’s” association, and in a job that was meant for her, she works part-time for the Census.  They live a very modest life…that’s about to change…shortly.

We go out early in the morning and bring back the Boston Globe and then head back out again.  We’re gone for an hour or so and come back to the condo.  My girlfriend’s Mom is waiting in the doorway.  She’s got a smile on her face that resembles a cat that might have just eaten a mouse, or that she’s just won Lotto.  You see one of the “perks” associated with the Newcomer’s group is that each week you get “something” free.  This past week it was a free Mass-Millions lottery ticket.  We ask her what’s up and she tells us, “It seems all six of my lottery ticket numbers match the Mass Millions numbers listed in the Boston Globe.  First things first – not that I’m an untrusting soul, but I needed to verify this myself.  I put on my accounting visor and check it out.  Sure enough they match exactly.

“WE’RE RICH!!!”  It’s amazing how quickly things become “We” when $10 Million dollars are involved.

 

Almost immediately I had a Seinfeld moment.  Think George Costanza and the white discoloration on his lip.  I’m thinking that God would not let this good fortune happen to me without some sort of repercussion.  I do a quick check of major body parts and everything seems to be okay (nothing terribly strange or way out of the ordinary… I have a broad spectrum of what’s acceptable).    It’s time to PAR-TEE!

There’s a lot of dancing and hi-fiving going on in the tiny living room of the condo.  Ya know how sometimes you can get a song stuck in your head.  Mine was, “I’m going to be a Millionaire.”  And that was the only verse the song had.  My girlfriend…or should I say, “Bride to Be” is on the phone calling the Lottery Commission looking to find out where we can pick up “our” millions.  She starts screaming at us to be quiet; she can’t hear the person on the phone.  Since this is an important next step to our riches we put a momentary can on our celebrating.  Girlfriend gets off the phone and looks at us as if we’d lost the lottery… which was the case, the Boston Globe had a misprint.  The last number we had was 25, and the real number was 45.  We scream, “We’ll sue, we’ve been mentally traumatized!”  We call the Globe.  They’re sympathetic.  They say, “Oh yeah we had a misprint, click.”

It’s never pretty when a grown man cries, but this episode was particularly ugly.  When I was able to control my sobbing, I called the jewelry store back, told them we just had a family crisis of epic proportions, and I wouldn’t be needing the layaway plan any longer.  That night we had planned to go to a nice restaurant called Captain Linell’s.  As we moped through dinner, more than one time the comment, “We could have owned this place” could be heard.

Postmortem: I did…eventually propose to the girlfriend.  Unfortunately for her, she said yes.  Now we live a very rich fulfilling life together with our two kids, two cats and a dog.  Gee isn’t that swell.