LUCKY

How many times have you heard someone say "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. I've never won anything in my life!" Well, that's not me. I win stuff all the time.

• In 1st or 2nd grade I went to a birthday party where we had to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar. I won, my guess being only a few beans off. The next week I went to another party, where we played the same game. I decided I might as well use the same guess as last time, and hit the number right on the nose.
• In 3rd grade a Hollywood producer waltzed into my classroom and said "You, you and you, come with me, and the next day I was riding the merry-go-round on the set of the movie State Fair, and getting paid $24 for it!
• I won the door prize at my senior all-night party - a "hot pants" outfit.
• My sister used to play bingo at this place in Dallas all the time, and never won a thing. The one and only time she made me go with her, I walked away with $500.
• When my kids were small, a friend told me to go stick my name in a drawing box at the grocery store. They were giving away 4 tickets to Six Flags every day, and not many people were bothering to enter, so the odds were good. A short time later they called to tell me I did not win the four tickets. I won the Grand Prize - four tickets, plus hotel, plus air fare to any of the Six Flags parks in the country.
• When we lived in Indonesia, a lot of our friends were ordering gorgeous handmade furniture from this guy in Singapore, but it was way too expensive for my blood. When John saw one of their fold-out bars though, he fell in love with it, and pestered me until I agreed to order one. A few weeks later I got a letter in the mail saying they'd entered all their clients' names in a drawing, and I'd won one of their fold-out bars.

The list goes on, but I think this is enough to get my point across. I'm lucky. When people hear about any of this, the first thing they always say is "Then why the heck won't you ever buy a lottery ticket?" Honest answer? Cuz I'm scared to death I might actually win. Then everything I've worked for, everything I value, everything I've tried to instill in my kids, would go straight to hell in a handbasket. Don't believe me? Go read any of the reports that are starting to surface now, about how "happy" most of the winners have ended up. Yeah, I'm lucky all right. Lucky to be smart enough to have figured that out on my own.

P.S. Many thanks to aaponline.org for the above image.