My greed nearly became the end of me last week. I was grabbing a bit of lunch when a rather large poster caught my attention. It asked if I was tired of working, and if I was ready to take a break. It had a lovely photograph of some lucky bloke out on the lake fishing. He was all laid back nice and proper with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. Below the boat quickly sinking was his cellular telephone. It was being watched by some rather curious fish.

The whole of the poster was really amusing to me, but that phone sinking to the bottom of the lake really turned me on. I would absolutely love to throw my phone as hard as I could into that lake. The poster was an advert for the Ohio lottery. Handwritten at the bottom was the newest jackpot, which was at that time twenty million dollars.

I toyed with my egg and pondered not having to work very hard, or little at all. It would be nice, I thought to myself, for my daughters to have the option, at the very least, of attending Ivy League schools, verses kudzu league. I�m not knocking my Mississippi venues of higher learning and I am quite proud of them, still, a Harvard law degree would surely demand more money.

�Excuse me, did you want more coffee or not sir?� the irritation poured out of the waitress. �No.� I managed to reply once my little dream world was shattered. �No thank you, I�m done here.� I gathered my hat and coat asked the lady for my check, and headed towards the cashier. Waiting on the others in line gave me more time to stare at that silly poster that was plastered everywhere. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to throw that damned telephone. I bought five reoccurring tickets for the Mega Millions game. The first drawing was Friday and was 20 million.

As I drifted out the door and back to my waiting truck, a strong wind suddenly blew across the parking lot. It wrenched the lottery ticket right out of my hand, as well as my hat from my head.

One of my pet peeves is to do that stupid klutz dance you do when you drop something in the wind. You�ve all been there I'm sure, where you almost catch it, and are about bend down to get it, and it blows away again. You chase it all over, trying to put your foot on it, or stomp it to catch it? Yeah, well I really hate that. I wasn�t letting it go though, I had just blown twenty five bucks on this ticket, and by damn, I wanted to go fishing and throw my phone in that stupid lake and no wind was going to stop me either!

At first I thought it had escaped. I searched all over that lot until I spied it under a flatbed truck, wedged under a tire. I crawled happily under the truck to retrieve my future winnings, and suddenly I heard it. The sound of the air brakes releasing. The driver was pulling out of his parking spot! �Oh Shit!� was all I could manage. Here I was on my hands and knees under a forty ton vehicle, not more than a foot from its back tires, and the damned things started moving! They were moving right at me too! Of all the ways for a truck driver to die, being mashed by a truck in the parking lot while on hands and knees would be a strange story to tell Saint Peter at the Pearly gates.

Now I�m no Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, I�ll tell you that, but I did a relatively fair impression of Tom as I rolled under that truck. I covered myself with my arms, and braced for what I thought would be a scrub against the axles for sure. It never happened. The truck just kept right on moving, and pulled out, leaving me laying on the ground in a fetal position in its wake.

In my grimy little paw was the lottery ticket.

I stood up, dusted myself off, smiled at people who had watched the whole thing, and walked back to me truck. I acted as if the whole affair was an everyday event.

I have that ticket still, and I think maybe I will frame it, because even if I don�t win the millions, I�ll still have beaten the odds.

Have a great evening D*Land!

~t