Striking It Rich, or Just Striking Out

Today, my fate stared at me in the face, and I stared back.

It all started as I was getting gas. As soon as I opened my car door, there they were, two perfectly shiny pennies staring at me from the cement below, both with the familiar image of Abraham Lincoln winking at me. Both heads-up, and at a gas station no less. One lottery ticket would be in my near future. Make that one 42-million-dollar lottery ticket.

As I started up the gas pump, I realized I didn’t have any dollar bills on me. This is a rare event for me, so I wasn’t sure what to do. I scrounged through the shadows of my car hoping to find a stray dollar bill. I know there was one back there recently, I had used it as a bookmark. But alas, my search came up empty.

Then I saw the pile of change in my center console. Could I? My mind wondered deviously. Should I? I’ve never used coins to buy a lottery ticket and something about it just doesn’t sound right. Lottery tickets should be a passive activity, not a last-ditch, every-last-nickel event. I quickly threw decorum to the wind and counted up my change. A couple quarters, a few dimes, throw in a couple nickels, yep… a full dollar.

I finished up with the gas and left my car to go purchase my fortune. Then disaster struck. A third penny lay on the ground before the door. The light caught it just so that I knew from ten feet away that it showed the stately pillars of tails-up.

Time slowed. My mind raced as I approached the dream-killing penny. I reasoned that I found two good pennies so I’m still up overall, but I knew I was only fooling myself. I tried to doubt the power of the penny but realized that would be a bit hollow as it was a penny that started this. I briefly considered going around the store to the other door, perhaps I would have had I not been so close.

In the end, I bent down and, per my usual routine, flipped the upside down penny over and then picked it up and put it in my pocket. Create your own luck, I always say. But it just didn’t feel right this time.

I knew right away too. I would not be getting a lottery ticket. Not today. While this realization was devastating in and of itself, the timing of the realization now left me with bigger issues as I stood in a tiny convenience with nothing in particular to buy. I looked around and settled on…

The sixteen ounce can of Diet Pepsi. That’s right… Today, twelve ounces wasn’t going to cut it. I needed each and every one of those extra four ounces and credit them with getting me through the day.