Skip to main content

Playing the Odds

My grandma was the luckiest person I ever knew. Buy her a scratch-off lottery ticket and it was sure to be a winner. Take her to the horse races and, betting $2 to show each race, she always broke a little more than even. Bingo games, Superbowl pools, it didn’t matter what—if someone was going to walk away with money, it would turn out to be Grandma.

She never abused her luck. She avoided casinos and saved her gambling for the church picnic. She also paid out her winnings to anyone who ended up to be traveling with her—usually her grandchildren and great-grandchildren—generosity being a hallmark of her spirit.

I did not inherit her luck. I’ve had pockets of good fortune, but not usually of the monetary variety. I never win the football pool, I only break even at the horse races if I stop betting early, and the last batch of scratch-offs I bought paid out only to other people.

Yet in the past year, I’ve found myself drawn to the lottery. Not the scratch-off kind, but the well-over-a-million-dollars-if-you-win kind. I had a dream—a vivid and very real dream—of matching up numbers. I can still feel the crescendo of excitement that pounded in my chest as I read off the winning digits in my dream, cross-checking them against the ticket in my hand.

My current ticket-buying habit goes a bit beyond wistful dreaming and may actually border on an expectation of eventual reward. Regardless of the outcome, the act of tucking that little piece of paper in my wallet feels like bottling enough hope to replenish my soul and reinvigorate my dreams.


On paper the odds are not in my favor. However, having had at least a decade’s worth of life experience opposite the favorably stacked odds, I know dangling dangerously off the edge of the negative side of the balance remains a possibility.

I've been the 1 out of 8 women diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States, though at the time of my initial diagnosis, the odds were closer to 1 in 300 because of my youthful age. My pregnancy was the 1 in 100 that carried a genetic defect. My baby, despite dire predictions of stillbirth, survived her delivery, which was nothing short of a miracle, given that her particular genetic defect was only seen in 1 out of 200,000 live births at that time.

So, I ask, why couldn't it work the other way? Why couldn’t I beat the lottery odds and walk away with a sizable sum? The law of averages suggests that everything evens out with time. Maybe I'm overdue for some positive windfall.

Image for the news resultNow if you'll excuse me, I have a lottery ticket to check. 


Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Training for Life

Two years ago a postcard advertising a personal trainer certification program arrived in my mailbox. It wasn’t a particularly noteworthy event, except that instead of throwing it immediately into the recycling bin, I held onto it. And began to do a little research into exactly what the certification process would entail. I couldn’t imagine how I would use said credential, yet the idea of adding personal trainer to my resume nagged at me like an itchy bug bite. I mentioned it to my sister…who promptly agreed to enroll in the program with me. After several months of discomfiting study that filled us both with fears of inadequacy, we completed the coursework. All that remained was the certification exam. My sister went first, early in the morning, and I followed suit on the same day, albeit after lunch. We both passed with flying colors. A few months later we attended our first “Fit Fest,” a weekend of workshops meant to build our skills and knowledge. We were at a distinct d...
Read more

The Curse of Expectation

I had a disappointment last week. I’d submitted my book to an indie writing contest and the winners were to be notified by Thursday. I didn’t get the notification. It’s not that I expected to win. Wait, scratch that. My disappointment indicates that indeed, on some level, I did expect some kind of recognition. Maybe I wasn’t expecting to take the grand prize, but I was hoping for at least an honorable mention. Acknowledging that was the first step in being able to let it go. Once I recognized my expectations as a cry for validation, I saw them clearly as a self-imposed burden of proof meant to silence the inner critic who keeps raising doubts about my writing talents. My disappointment wasn’t about the quality of my work—it was about my need to prove myself. What I am learning—slowly, painfully, and inevitably the hard way—is that disappointment is an inside job, rooted in my expectation of how the events in my life are supposed to turn out. I keep slapping my preconceived...
Read more

Valentine's Day

It's Valentine's Day. My husband is working today, not that we would have had plans to do anything special. It is, for us, just another weekend, simple and ordinary. Both of us are more pragmatic than romantic in nature. The one time I sent Scott a bouquet, he sold it to a co-worker who'd just had a blow-out with his girlfriend and needed a make-up gift. He did take me out to dinner with the proceeds of the sale, but the writing was on the wall. We would not be a couple who showered each other with sentimental tokens of love. My career path into the kindergarten classroom has ensured a steady stream of gifts and goodies, so I haven't missed out. Every year I am inundated with boxes of chocolates and valentines filled with sweet expressions of the undying affection of my five- and six-year-old friends. I rather enjoy this innocent side of the holiday. Racy lingerie and dirty talk are not my forte. Hand-scrawled hearts and messages of unconditional love and accept...
Read more