I didn’t win last week’s 270 million dollar PowerBall lottery. So if you’re a long lost relative looking for a handout, save your stamp/phone call/e-mail bandwidth. However, if you’re a long lost relative who just wants to get in touch, that would be fine.
Speaking of relatives, or, relatively speaking, I caught myself thinking that I wouldn’t bother with this week’s lottery because it ONLY awards a meer $15 million to the winner. My, my, my. I have heard that a former student of mine has done wonderfully well in business, and has retired to a palatial home with about $16 million for himself. There must be a difference if the wealth is earned, as opposed to if it’s handed to you with no more effort than to shell out a couple of bucks for a ticket or two. I think (know) I’d be satisfied even with the paltry sum of $15 million. I guess if one is to go through the foolishness of pinning your hopes on a lottery ticket, it might as well be for a big amount.
Then again, as a friend used to remind me, we are all fabulously wealthy by the world’s standards. By “we”, I mean just about everybody in the U. S. middle class – even those that think they are struggling to get by. This would be the perfect place to launch into a tirade about upper-middle class liberal guilt, the politics of wealth, or the need to donate to the less fortunate, but those things have been said much more eloquently by others. If I did receive such a windfall as a lottery, part of the fun would be giving most of it away, some of that fun coming from seeing whom I could annoy with my blessings.