I'm a Lucky Val

Let the record show that Val usually follows her hunches. Even if it makes her appear selfish. Oh, I'm selfish all right, but I normally don't advertise that fact. How do you think The Pony was born without a care for helping people? It is surely in his DNA.

Every Friday, I mail letters to The Pony and Genius. The Pony gets some money, and Genius gets two lottery tickets. Sometimes I buy Genius's tickets on Thursday, when I get some for myself. Occasionally, I decide to scratch his two as well, and stop on the way to the post office the next morning for two tickets to tuck into Genius's envelope. I never know when I'll get a hankerin' to scratch his tickets, but I'll say it's been less than half a dozen times. Once I won $5. And Thursday, I won $50. I'd feel bad for him, but he's making more money than I am, and I don't have to send him any tickets at all. Besides, he always has a chance to win something better on the new tickets.

So...Friday morning, I left early enough to stop at two different places to get Genius's tickets. I tucked them into his letter, and mailed it. From there, I continued on my not-daily route, out to the bank to get the usual weekly allowance for Hick and me. On the way back home, I stopped at the CRAZY MAN DONUT INCIDENT Casey's, to get gas for T-Hoe. I don't really like going there anymore, and only do it when I get gas, since my favorite Casey's went out of business.

My plan was to spend the rest of that $50 I had won on that [originally Genius's] ticket. I'd spent $10 on Genius's new tickets, and was contemplating $10 for my own tickets, and $30 on gas. That's about 1/3 of a tank for T-Hoe. I top him off every week, never letting him get too low. Because who wants to spend $100 to fill him up??? Not this ol' Val, that's for sure.

Once inside, I saw that this store had five of the $5 tickets to choose from. I picked out two, using the logic that the older tickets are going to start paying, because new ones come out on the last Monday of the month. One of the tickets I selected was this kind:

After all, what ticket is more appropriate for Val than one called CASINO CASH? It has two different areas to win. You can find a money bag symbol in a little box, and win 5/10/15/30. I always scratch that part first. I did not get a money bag. I glanced down at the bottom to read the instructions, because I forget which symbols are good on which tickets. I had no sooner checked those two symbols (a pair of dice, or a roulette wheel) than I scratched off the top number (or so I thought) and FOUND A ROULETTE WHEEL! That means it's a WIN ALL. I win all the prizes.

You can imagine how excited I was! As much as when I won that $50 the day before. I counted how many chances I had to win. Huh. It was 12. I had immediately assumed that each of those winning amounts would be the minimum. I expected to get 10 of the $5 amount, and win $50. But 12 chances didn't work out like that. I didn't know any ticket that paid $60. So I got my hopes up that maybe it was a combination of $5 and $10, and I'd won $100. Even better!

Well. I was flabbergasted when I scratched off the first prize amount, and saw $100! That's definitely a good start! But it got even better...

In case you don't want to add that up, it's $1000, people! I won $1000 on a $5 ticket.

Of course I sent a picture of it to Genius, AKA Mr. Pics Or It Didn't Happen. I also wished him well on his two tickets that are in the mail, but cautioned that I might just have used my luck on myself after dropping his in the mail slot.

As of yet, I have not received a congratulatory text from Genius.

Seriously. It's not like I can tell which ticket is going to win. Or help it if my luck is non-transferrable. I also left out the part about me scratching his original tickets and winning $50. What Genius doesn't know can't hurt him.