Lucky day

The other day I went to the little grocery store in town to get a very expensive Kombucha wonder drink with its own live scobie, and decided that as long as I’m throwing money around, I should also buy a lottery ticket.

There are many choices – mega millions, Hit 5, lotto, powerball, yada yada.  I don't do this very often, so I'm unfamiliar with the choices.  “Do you have any advice for me,” I ask the young lady with the pierced lip.

“Yeah.  Don’t buy one.”

“Hmm, but I think I will.”

“Why, are you feeling lucky?”

“No, not really. But there is luck out there, I know that for sure.”  I know that because of this:  the other day, R. went to Value Village with a friend who had just started collecting unicorn figurines. While they were looking for clothes, she noticed a few mis-matched  unicorns arranged in a circle on a shelf, all their tiny glass horns pointed towards the middle. 

“Seems odd that they’re in a little circle, doesn’t it, R?”

“Yep.”

She bought the miniature herd, and then, later that day, learned that one of her friends had been in the store earlier, found the unicorns dispersed throughout the store, amidst all of the other knick-knacks and junk, and gathered them into the little arrangement. 

It seems to me if that’s happening, I should purchase a lottery ticket, right? I decide on Mega millions, because the pot was biggest.  This isn’t really about odds anymore.  The difference between odds of one in 7 million versus one in 18 million is really the difference between odds of getting run over by a vintage airstream trailer at the same time the meteor strikes, or just the meteor.  If you’re buying a lottery ticket, luck is doing the heavy lifting; math is kind of hanging around looking cute, as usual.

“Do you want to do the mulitplier?”

But she says it, mult-eye-plier, so it sounds like many pipe wrenches or something, and I have no idea what she’s even talking about.

“Mult-eye-plier,” I repeat.  “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. You pay an extra dollar for it.”

“Do you win more,” I ask, as if mega millions alone just won’t do.  I still haven’t figured out that the word is multiplier, as in, you multiply one thing by another thing, usually leading to a bigger thing.  I’m still thinking about a pipe wrench.

“I don’t think so.”

“You mean, I just pay double for the same odds, and the same prize money?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll do that,” I say.  “Give me one multi-plier, please.”

She looks at me strangely as I buy the $1 ticket for two dollars.

I didn’t win, but I think I’ll keep doing this.  The mult-eye-plier and everything.