Buy Myself a Lotto Ticket

I’m fixing to buy myself a lotto ticket.

I know some folks think that’s a sinful thing to do, and it might be, but that’s not for me to say. What I do know is the lotto is a tax, and it’s a particular kind of tax, it’s a tax on stupidity. That’s right, they tax everything these days.

Now I’m the first to admit I’ve been sinful and stupid before, but I thought I had seen the light and quit buying those things.

Well, I had, that is until this past Sunday morning. I got up early and while I was making the coffee I noticed my wife’s big stack of lotto tickets on the table. She likes to get up and get the number out of the Sunday paper and flip through all her lotto tickets while she has her coffee. But so far she was still snoozing this morning.

I put on a pot of salted water for some grits, but every time I walked by the table those lotto tickets seemed to tug at my mind.

She would be up before long, and be real ill if she didn’t have a Sunday paper to check the numbers. You could get them on line, but she liked that ritual of rattling the paper and sighing in distress as she tossed the last of her winless tickets in the trash.

The coffee had dripped enough down so I could get a half cup, so I grabbed one and eased on out and drove down to the Circle-K and got a Sunday paper. But before I left the store I flipped to page three of the paper and got an advance look at those winning numbers.

I mean the jackpot was up to 40 million dollars and over the last few days the stupid folks were running amok gobbling up tickets, paying taxes.

I found that winning number. I memorized it and walked back to the counter and bought a new lotto ticket with those winning numbers. Of course it was one day late and $40 million short, but some folks didn’t know that.

Everything seemed to be going my way ‘cause she still hadn’t made it to the kitchen by the time I got back. The water for my grits had reached a rolling boil. I thought about I might even put a hunk of cheese in them in a little while, after they had cooked a spell.

But before I did anything else, I slid the bottom ticket out from under her stack of lotto tickets and replaced it with the fresh one I had just purchased.

Pretty soon I had some good and hot cheese grits, scrambled eggs and some lean, crisp bacon on the table. ‘Bout that time she came in and grunted good morning as I slid a cup of coffee over her way. She hadn’t had two sips before she went for that paper and that stack of lotto tickets.

I just wanted to see how she would react. Would she scream and jump in my lap? That’s what I imagined, but I was dead wrong.

When she got to that last ticket, she was cool as a cucumber. She folded the paper up, took that “winning” lotto ticket along with her coffee and just departed without so much as just a look. She never even touched her grits.

I just kind of milled around there in the kitchen for a while, cleaning things up, thinking I might have gone too far. In fact part of me was screaming “Go tell her right now!” But it was too late.

Suddenly she came walking through the kitchen, fully dressed, stopped directly in front of me, gave me a kind of “See you later” look before she said, “I’m gonna be gone for a while, need to pick up a few things. I might call you.”

I knew at that moment I had been too much of a bad boy, but before I could say a word, the door slammed and she was gone.

She’s gonna be fixing to be real mad when she gets back.