News this week that a Cessnock couple had won the lottery triggered some familiar lottery-winning laments within.
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The first one being "damn".
Not necessarily that they had won, and I hadn't.
Nor that they were the sole winner of that particular draw and therefore didn't have to share the spoils.
No, it was mainly damn that I had failed to buy a ticket in the lottery at all, yet again, reminding me that at this rate, I will never achieve my dying wish.
Which is to die of surprise at the age of 140 having won the lottery for the seventh time since the age of 120.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be as a sole winner but then again, in the nature of unlikely events, why not.
Interestingly enough, the age for this dying wish keeps going up the less I win the lottery. Or the more I realise I should increase my ambition.
If not in life, then surely death.
The fact I continue to not buy a lottery ticket probably shows the lengths some people will go to self sabotage their dreams.
And it makes sense.
You spend more time fantasising about what you'd do if you won the lottery, instead of doing something about winning the lottery.
If I did win the lottery I'd definitely be generous. This is a fantasy after all.
There'd be allotments of cash going to all my friends and family and definitely a string of philanthropic gestures, if that's what you call buying a yacht.
The Cessnock couple announced they were going to do "bugger all".
And that's another thing I definitely relate to, because I'd hate to think becoming a gazillionaire would change me.
But before doing bugger all, I'd have to do at least one thing, and that is buy that ticket.
Experts, like my mother-in-law and certain couples out at Cessnock, will tell you it's the single greatest lottery-winning strategy.
Followed closely by using birthdays as the guide to pick your numbers.
It's something I tend to lament whenever someone local wins the lottery and I haven't bought a ticket.
Not that I didn't use birthdays as a guide to pick my numbers
But rather that I didn't buy a ticket.
The funny thing is it's something I tend to lament when I have bought a ticket too.
The connecting tissue here being that either way, I usually haven't won the lottery.
It highlights the statistical and existential challenge that winning the lottery is.
But it does happen. As our couple out at Cessnock will tell you.
So I better start getting into shape for that dying wish and buy a ticket.
Otherwise, I might die of surprise the first time I win the lottery, and that would be a waste.
Failing that, it's Mother's Day tomorrow and come what may, I'm sure each and every mum will look at their children and realise, they've already won the lottery.
And vice versa of course.
