I won the lottery!

I’m sorry for repeating myself. I’m just trying to let it sink in.

OK, so a couple of months back, I wrote an article about all these people who won the lottery, and I thought, “Why hasn’t this ever happened to me?” And then I realized it was most likely—and I’m no expert here—because I had never in my life bought a lottery ticket.

But I was thinking about making a purchase, because you know, we hear good things. You hear in the news all the time about people who won the lottery, and most of them are people who didn’t even expect to win. They say: “We didn’t even expect to win! We just wanted to throw away our money for the fun of scratching things with a coin!”

So in my article, I ended off with the question of whether or not people thought I should buy a ticket. And some people said not to bother. But I decided to ignore them, because I figure they’re just trying to keep the numbers down so they have a better chance of winning.

So I bought a ticket. I went into the store and stood in line—an almost 40-year-old who had never bought a ticket—and resolved that I would have to pretend that I knew what I was doing:

“One lottery ticket, please,” I would say, like an adult.

“What kind?”

“Um… A winning kind?”

I decided I would buy a scratcher, for starters. I didn’t really want to buy one that depended on a drawing, because then I’m competing with the zechusim of millions of other people. On the other hand, the downside of scratchers is that, at least with a drawing, you can pick your numbers and then go home and daven that you should win. With a scratcher, once you buy your ticket, it’s already either a winner or a loser. You can’t go home and daven before you start scratching. It’s too late. You have to daven right there in the drug store.

But anyway, I bought it, and I took it home, because I didn’t want to stand in the store scratching like an animal, and I won!

You might think I’m lying for the sake of an article, but I’m not. I honestly, seriously did win the lottery. I won $3. And the ticket only cost $2!

Don’t tell the yeshivos.

To be honest, I’m afraid to even tell you guys that I won, because people are going to start coming out of the woodwork and going, “Remember me?”

I’m trying not to let this whole thing go to my head, though. For the most part, I think I should go on as if nothing has happened. I don’t want anyone to feel like now they have to treat me differently.

What I’m worried about is that they always say that people who win the lottery don’t know how to handle the money, and they end up losing it pretty quickly. So I need a plan. I’m going to try to be responsible. I want to see if I can call a financial planner or something. I want to be good about this. I’m not going to go out and buy a nicer car or anything. No one’s going to know, to look at me, that I won the lottery.

I did decide that I’m going to get the lump sum, instead of in installments over the course of like 20 years.

First I’m going to get the cash and fan it out in front of me. Maybe put it in a bathtub and swim in it.

But when I’m done playing around, I’m thinking that I want to put a third of it away for the future, put a third of it in my kids’ education fund, and buy myself something nice with the other third. That’s what everyone seems to do.

And obviously, I’m going to give a 10th—maybe even a fifth—to tzedaka. I’ll cut them a nice check. Maybe they’ll honor me at a dinner, but I’ll tell them that I didn’t do it for the recognition.

To be honest, though, there are some naysayers out there. Like my wife keeps saying, “Yeah, you only won one dollar.” I don’t see it as that. I don’t need this kind of negativity in my life. The way I see it, I flushed two dollars down the toilet. Those two dollars were gone. And then I won three dollars. That’s 200% more than she’s saying I won. “Don’t let people put you down,” that’s what I say.

And you know what? You know what? If my wife’s going to talk like that, she doesn’t get any of my winnings. There, I said it. She will not see a penny of it. Not one penny.

Oh my goodness, look what this money is turning me into.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I feel like I should mention that I actually bought a second lottery ticket. I didn’t win that one, and it cost me $3.

I actually bought both tickets on the same trip. I figured that I should buy two, because in case one of them lost, the other one would pay for it. It didn’t quite.

The question is, now that I won, am I going to buy another ticket? I don’t think so. I don’t want to push my luck over here. No one really wins the lottery twice. It looks suspicious, like I’m rigging the game. So I’m going to quit while I’m ahead-ish.

Point is, I won the lottery, and in the tradition of all lottery winners, I’m probably going to quit my job. So this is my last column. Unless it turns out that I blow through all my winnings faster than expected, in which case I’ll be back next week. I guess we’ll see what happens. Actually, I think I already blew through—Oh, wait. It was in my other pocket.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, it was just regular-size money. That was the one disappointment.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].