Every day we are teased with advertisements and promotions of winning the lottery. Stories invariably circulate about the lucky person who was persuaded to buy a ticket, and ended up winning the jackpot, subconsciously ingraining in our minds exactly what the lotto people want us to think, and a belief millions of individuals invest in weekly, "hey, you never know". However few and far between the big pay offs of the lotto are, the allure is undeniable. That is exactly what was running through the minds of my friend mike and I last thursday. We had bought a lotto ticket that afternoon, and after having been out on the town all day and night, and before calling it a night we decided to check the winning numbers, which were:

We had matched four out of the six numbers. According to the New York State lottery site this entitled us to a fourth level price which was 6.25% of the jackpot which was six and a half million dollars. This is calculates to be three hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Ecstatic, we hugged, danced, and called everyone in our phone books. It was four in the morning but we did not care: we were rich! We stayed up all night planning trips to Bali, new cars and a multitude of other ways to indulge ourselves and invest our new fortune.

We woke up first thing in the morning and took a taxi to from 96th street to the Lotto collection office on Beave Street in the Financial District. Waiting on line we were bubbling over with excitement, licking our lips, and rubbing our hands in eager anticipation. We finally were up, and flew to the counter. The lady behind the desk checked our numbers and verified we won a fourth level prize. We were waiting for the armed guards to come from the back pushing a cart piling high with stacks of money, with hundred dollar notes floating in the air behind them. There was a scanning machine adjacent to our booth in which the lady asked us to swipe our ticket to show our prize. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. The machine clicked, whooshed, and spit out a receipt.

34 dollars. What? How? We looked back and forth to each other in dissapointed confusion. This was barely enough to cover the taxi downtown, nonetheless take us to the fabled verdant country sides, and golden beaches of Bali. Dejected we walked out and went right across the street to the deli, and bought 34 dollars worth of new lotto tickets--"Hey, you never know".