Once upon a time I won everything I entered. I grew up in a small town and so everyone knows everyone, and they always seemed to remember who won something from the last event with raffle prizes in the community. Now because they remembered when invariably my name would get drawn for one prize or another rather than a cheer I would get a groan. An unbelieving, exasperated groan.
My Aunt would buy me and my brother scratch tickets on occasion when we were kids, shhhh don’t tell, and each time it seemed I would win something. I was always finding bits of loose change in the grass and back then finding a few quarters meant chips AND a drink.
Now not all my luck was good luck but those moments which would appear to be a bit of bad luck often turned out quite well. Take for example during a baseball tournament. While running backwards to catch an important ball I tripped in a gopher hole. Only I would have the luck to still somehow come up with the ball in my glove, and I certainly can’t attribute it to skill.
As an adult I win much less and when I do win a prize at a raffle it’s always the one basket I didn’t really want but had an extra ticket. I’ve come home with a couple of rather interesting baskets let me tell you. Every heard of Passion Party? That basket was not kid friendly.
So I may not be as lucky as I once was but I still like to buy the odd scratch ticket, enter in raffles, and I do occasionally gamble with a set amount of money I fully expect to lose.
So what this all comes down to is the single digit lady luck flashed at me last week. I without out any preconceived notion that I’m lucky or not lucky buy a 50/50 ticket as does my husband every time either of us goes to a Jets game. The odds are against winning however someone out of 15004 people in attendance will win each night and so we buy our ticket.
I went to a game on Monday night $44,000 was the take home prize.
One number off.
One.
What this basically boils down to is that someone who bought their ticket at approximately the same time as mine won. If my seller had hit the button a split second later or his a split second faster the winner would have had my ticket and I would have had his.
Somehow that makes it hurt just a little bit more.
