The Fever

“You’ve got to be in it to win it!”
 

I was leaving the office for the day.  That was my colleague’s parting shot.  On the table was a potential $500 million (and growing) Powerball payout.  “Get your ticket, man!”  This, from someone whose judgment I trust, most of the time.  I actually paused and thought about it.  Score one for peer pressure.  And, I suppose {ahem} for greed.

By the time I got to my car, the thought had vanished.  I wasn’t going to be “in it.”  I was going to hold onto my two bucks.

One in 176 million.  Those were the odds.  I heard some statistics wonk on the radio equate that to the likelihood of having twenty-two grandchildren who are all female.  According to CNN, the odds of dying from a lightning strike are one in three million.  Odds of being struck by lightning in the course of an 80 year lifetime, one in 10,000.
 
I’m a risk-averse guy.  I brush and floss.  I brush WITH floss.  I wear my seatbelt at all times.  I’m wearing it right now, sitting at my desk.  Because you never know.

Powerball?  Not so much.

So I drove home, with that familiar, warm feeling of mild superiority enveloping my spirit.  I was wise.  I was thrifty.  I was prudent.  I used my turn signals.

Over dinner, my wife told me that she’d entered her workplace Powerball pool.  Once again, that tiny greed-voice whispered: maybe I was “in it” after all!  There was a nanosecond of something that felt a little like relief.  Then my True Self reappeared, with its litany of questions: how many others were in the pool (as though splitting 500 million dollars with a handful of elementary school teachers was really going to create a hardship?)  Who collected the money, and can we trust that person?  Interesting side note there, the individual who actually did collect the money was the brother of a notorious murderer {true story…  curiously, this is the only detail of this blog post that is not tongue-in-cheek; go figure.} 
 
In the end, none of it mattered.  The next day, we didn’t get to tell anyone to shove anything, anywhere.  Probably just as well; just imagine the taxes.