Which Came First, the Good Deed or the Luck?

 ____________________________________________________________________

Want to help the Missouri S&T Solar Car Team get to Australia?  http://bit.ly/2nxOVeh

There are still 21 days left to donate anything from a dollar (no perk included) up to $2,500 (your name on the side of the Solar Car).

Or suggest a name for free! 
_____________________________________________________________________

Here! Take my hand! Sorry to leave you danglin' overnight. Come on back up here on solid ground and sit a spell while I tell you the rest of the story.

When we last convened, Val was headed for the Casey's General Store to put some gas in T-Hoe. She was worried about the smell of natural gas that had blanketed the area a couple hours earlier. No sign of the gas leak, so T-Hoe got a healthy snort of super unleaded, and Val got a scratch-off ticket. Let the record show that Val is not one of those people who stand at the counter scratching, then shoves a winner right back across to take another. Nope. Val hauls her tickets home to scratch at her leisure, down in her dark basement lair (with the lights on) while sipping her 44 oz Diet Coke.

But first I had to buy my 44 oz Diet Coke. I headed to the gas station chicken store. Their Diet Coke is especially delicious. My favorite parking space was available! I gathered my correct change and headed toward the door. What's THIS?

On the little homemade blacktop ramp they have in place of a step into the door, I saw something. Having picked up a trashy coffee cup on their lot before and disposed of it, I gave this refuse the eye. Wait a minute! That was a $5 bill! Folded all cattywompus, triangling back on itself, like somebody had stuffed that bill into a front pocket after wadding it up a little.

I bent to pick up that $5 bill. Not caring if somebody heading out the glass door disregarded my bowing noggin and made me see stars. Not caring who might be getting too much of a view of my ample buttocks, while sitting in one of the cars waiting at the traffic light over past the grassy area where blog buddy Sioux saw the 150-year town anniversary wooden birthday cake. We're lucky she didn't try to pop out of it and do a dance (with thumbs and little kicks), since the police back then were probably already on their way from the gas station chicken faux pas she pulled by putting herself-on-a-stick upon the soda fountain.

Anyhoo...yesterday I picked up that $5 bill and stepped inside.

"Look what I found in front of your door!" I handed it across the counter to the little Asian clerk guy who sometimes gives me a tip on recently-sold winners so I don't waste my purchase. "Do you think somebody will come back looking for it?"

Clerk Guy shot his eyes at Chicken Gal. In unison, they said, "Probably." Clerk Guy painstakingly unfolded that fiver, and set it aside.

"If nobody claims it, I guess you two can fight it out." I went to the fountain for my magical elixir. "You never know. It could be somebody's last five dollars. Or maybe somebody was going to use it to buy a lottery ticket."

No good can come of keeping something that's not yours, you know. Sure, I could have used that $5 bill to buy a scratch-off ticket. Maybe it would have been a big jackpot winner. Maybe I'll read about it in the paper tomorrow, that one of those workers won big on a ticket bought at the gas station chicken store. But maybe that was all the money somebody had left until Friday payday. And they needed a couple of gallons of gas to get them to work. All I know is...that $5 bill didn't belong to me, so I turned it in.

Sure, those workers might have laughed their not-so-ample buttocks off after I left. "Can you BELIEVE IT? She turned in money she found on the parking lot! More for us!"

Or they might have thought I did the right thing.

I bought two tickets while I was there. Turns out one of them won five dollars. But the one I got at the non-gassy Casey's?

I wonder if Karma and Even Steven are psychic. Or simply like to test people.

___________________________________________________________________

UPDATE WEDNESDAY (4-19-17) at 2:30 p.m.

Looks like that good deed DID come before the luck. Today (Wednesday, 4-19-17) I took some of my winnings and bought two of the Golden Tickets (at two different locations) and both were winners. The first was for $60, so I doubled my investment. The second winner? Take a gander at THIS:

That's a $500 winner.

You've gotta ride the wave while it's cresting, my friends!