The Lottery

The lottery reached $123 million dollars now. Everyone wanted a piece of that pie. The stores were crammed with people wanting to buy lottery tickets. Some had their own numbers, some just wanted random numbers but all wanted to win at least a little of it.

When the winning numbers were announced later in the week, I checked my numbers, first one number, then another number. I almost cried when I saw I had all the winning numbers. I couldn't believe my eyes!

I hated my job, my home needed a lot of work, and all I could think about was collecting what I won. Wow! I had to drive four hours to collect it at the state capitol city of Raleigh.

I looked up the address on my phone, and jumped in my car with my daughter by my side. We would make a day of it. I was off work but I wasn't going back anyway. I took my daughter out of school but she didn't mind. We were on our way after a trip to get gas and food of course.

We arrived at the lottery headquarters around lunchtime. Walking inside I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. I had dreamed for years what I would do with this kind of money. Now it had happened and I had no idea where to start.

After all the paperwork and receiving my check in the mail, I finally ended up with $87.8 million cash pay out. It would probably have been more but I wanted to get the lump sum amount.

After the money was in my bank account, what to do with it was the question. I have six kids, all but two are grown. After I took each one of them to a local car lot, each one got a brand new vehicle. I even bought a new vehicle for the girl friend of two of my sons-one of which has a newborn son (my first grandchild).

My next purchase was the land next to our house. It had been vacant for well over 30 years. My son cleared the land and I hired a house builder to build two houses on it. One for each of my two oldest sons.

What they didn't already have, I bought them. They got new appliances and some new furniture. Not to mention the other 'frivolous' items I got all of them, my husband, and myself.

I still had much of the money left. I had some ideas and even some things I wanted to do with it.

Looking around my town, there seemed to be a lot of buildings standing empty. I knew nothing about starting a business or a store. I did know people were out of work. Asking around, I found some people who knew at least a little about what to do. I hired them and bought one of those empty buildings and told them to get it started.

I wanted to do something nice for my community. I took $1000 out in cash. I went to a local gas station where I went almost daily. I knew the store manager. I talked with her a moment and asked her to take the $1000 and give the next customers purchasing gas a full tank until the money was gone. She agreed and I left. She called me later and said it lasted for about two hours. I was so happy to help people.

Christmas was coming up soon. Since most stores who have lay-a-way tell people to take their items out by the middle of December, I went to some of the stores around me the first week of December. Walmart, Best buy, Target, and a few smaller stores. I asked to pay off everyone's lay-a-way purchases. They called those customers and told them about my good deed. So many people will have a great Christmas because of my generosity. That made my entire day.

After all my good deeds and helping where I could, I went on vacation with my husband of 29 years. We went to Vegas because I always wanted to go. Then we decided to go overseas. We visited England, France, and Italy.

I love how I could do what I wanted and be able to help people who really needed and deserved it. I have always loved to help and now I could do it.