They Lit Up the Night

I’ve been making the trip six days a week for over three years. Monday through Saturday, every day, at 2:30 PM, I walk around the corner to check the mail. Sometimes I have to go back at 3:00 PM because our mailman (mail-person) is not as reliable as that commitment from the Mailman’s Oath would make you think. Ours is deterred by “snow, rain, heat, gloom of night,” and a million other things. The walk is typically a non-event, no one’s home that time of day, there’s never much through traffic, it’s quick enough that weather is not a factor. The mailbox, or the contents do constitute an event for me, akin to opening gifts on Christmas morn when you were a kid. I call it junk mail, as most do, but in my mind, it’s entertainment, the sale papers, coupon books, political flyers, even the bills, the occasional birthday card, holiday greeting cards, a rare magazine—no letters, of course. It’s disappointing that no one mails letters these days—it’s a lost art—the way people used to write letters. Today we get texts with awful spelling and grammar, incomplete thoughts, crazy abbreviations. Anyway, I’m getting off-topic. Earlier this week I was on my way to the mailbox and where I cross the street, right in the middle of the street, there was this shiny black thing about the size of a business card. I couldn’t resist—I picked it up. It was a tiny black book, only about an eighth of an inch thick, maybe ten pages, each scribbled all over, but without a legible thought anywhere, not a single group of letters that made up any real word in any language I knew. There were more numbers than letters, but the numbers didn’t add up to anything cogent either. I decided to check with the neighbor nearest the spot in the road to see if the book was his, but, he said, “Nope, not mine.” So, I took it home with me—better than anything in the mailbox lately.

My wife and I looked through the mail, then we took a closer look at the little black book. She’s the one who noticed the format of the numbers on the last few pages, groups of six, between one and sixty, separated by commas, three sets per page on both sides of the last three pages, “Aren’t those the lottery numbers?”

That, from her, was surprising. She’s a real skeptic when it comes to games of chance, lotto, lottery, card games, slot machines. I wouldn’t have guessed that she knew the lotto numbers were 1-60. I, on the other hand, am a believer. I’m probably a net-loser over the years I’ve played, but I have done well at times---one prize over $1700, over $8000 in video poker wins in Vegas, and I’m a faithful player. So, I took the little book as kismet. I headed to the local convenience store and paid $18 to play all 18 sets of numbers from the little book. The grand prize was $150,000, but the second prize of $20,000 would be wonderful. The drawing wasn’t for five days, so I put my tickets away and waited patiently, mostly.

I thought about it most of the next Saturday that the drawing was that night. I routinely loaded the state lottery website on my laptop about the time the evening news started, but this week I had this feeling. I jotted down the winning numbers, but I decided that I would wait until morning to check my numbers. Then I let it get almost out of hand—if I won and found out Sunday morning, I would have to wait until Monday to go to the Lottery Commission office to cash my ticket—and I was afraid that wait would be just too long. I put the tickets away and decided to check early Monday.

I did, very early. I woke up just after 3:00 AM, wide awake, thinking about the lottery. I had the winning numbers written down, but now I was torn between checking my tickets and then waking my wife, or waking her now to check with me. On the off chance, at least in my mind, that we didn’t win, she’d be more than a little annoyed that I woke her at 3:15 AM. I decided to check now and wake her later.

I sat down at my desk, turned the eighteen tickets face-down, put the slip with winning numbers in front of me, took a deep breath, or two, or three, turned over the first of the eighteen-not a winner, turned over the second-two numbers, not a winner, turned over the third—5 numbers, $20,000!

I felt a little dizzy, my heart raced. I started to get up but lost my balance and fell back into my chair. I sat there for a while, tried to relax, finally felt more composed. My mind was still racing, but my breath slowed, my pulsed settled. I held the winning ticket up and asked myself, “What are we gonna do with this? Waste it, spend it, save it?” Of course, it wasn’t my place to decide unilaterally, but I could dream a little before I surprised my wife. I had this fleeting vision of me sitting on a Mustang Cobra, about to let out the clutch and roll out of our driveway. I let it go, for now.

I watched the clock, twice walked into the other room to check the time on another clock, convinced that the one I was watching was moving too slowly. Finally, it hit 5:15 AM, I went into the bedroom, gently rocked my sweet wife to and fro until she turned to see it was me.

She looked at the clock on the night-stand, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. It’s what’s right, very right. We won $20,000 in the lottery!”

She shot up, nearly to her feet, swatted me on the shoulder almost hard enough to knock me down, “NO! You’re teasing! Show me!”

I showed her the winning ticket. She was convinced, but asked, “What do we do next?”

“Get dressed, we have to go to the Lottery Commission Office to redeem the ticket. It’ll take an hour to get there, it opens at 8:00, so we need to leave here by 7:00 unless you want to grab some breakfast somewhere?”

And, that’s the way it went. She got dressed, we left not long after 6:00 AM, grabbed breakfast at our favorite pancake place, hit the road for the Lottery Office about 7:00 AM. We talked all the way across town, bounced ideas all around the car, from one topic to another, and just as we pulled into the Lottery Office parking lot, we decided what we would do with the money.

We thought about a trip, maybe some new furniture, clothes, perhaps invest the money, but the conversation eventually turned to what might give us the absolute, greatest satisfaction—and the decision was unanimous. We could both imagine how great it would feel to put smiles on the faces of all the people we love most. The math was pretty simple, we had two children, between us 3 siblings, each with spouses or partners, and 5 nieces and nephews. We couldn’t buy them all new cars, but we decided that we’d divide the 20,000 by 13, have a barbeque at our place, and hand out checks to all of them. Our plan worked—we’d remember it forever, the smiles lit up the night and filled our hearts with joy!