A Game of Chance

Friday night. The weekend stretching in front of me like the cat when he wakes up from his nap. It's truly a beautiful thing.

The California lottery is up to 82 million this weekend. I may buy a ticket, just to be able to dream for a few hours. I actually know someone who won an obscene amount of money in the lottery. A couple years ago, a former co-worker won over 60 million. At age 25.

He got to quit work and travel as much as he wanted. I think he even eventually bought a new car (he drove a decade old car with oxidation eating away the paint on the hood). I was jealous, except for the happiness that kept intruding on me. He was a really really really nice person. (Who even quietly voted on the side of the angels -amazing in the OC). If I could have nominated someone, I could not have made a better choice. A good person, with a solid head on their shoulders, who would really have a great life and do some actual, measurable good. For a long time.

I did field a bunch of questions about him, afterwards, and the question came up over and over again. What would you do, if you won?

I can't ever seem to quite make up my mind. It is hard to imagine what you would actually do if something like that happened to you. What if your life changed, in some permanent, but generally good way- tomorrow?

What would you do?

It's interesting to reflect on what each person says they would do. I think that the generally more honest people tend to say things about trips they would take, where they would live. People who want to seem somehow morally above everyone else (this is a common response) tend to say things about how much money they would give to the homeless, or more often (again- the OC) how they would give money to their church. How they would keep working. (I can't see anyone I work with actually sticking to that one- I sure wouldn't).

It's the church one that gets me, ever the atheist. The church I went to didn't even have a soup kitchen. Nothing ever went out of that church into the community except condescension and occasionally, scorn. What exactly do they do with all that money? Convince people in Africa that sex is evil and abstinence is the only way to prevent AIDS? Send zealous children to convert the heathens?

I'd rather hear that they would buy a swimming pool and a BMW, to be honest.

I think I would go to Gombe, to go out into the forest and see the descendants of Jane Goodall's original chimpanzees. I would have to suck it up about the freakish bugs in the rain-forest, but my gosh. Chimpanzees in the wild. Sigh.

Vietnam. Pho eaten from bowls. The greenest trees. I've never been. But I would if I could.

The little town in Norway that lies half-way between Oslo and Bergen that I visited years ago with my grandparents. It's literally unspellable for me, but you say the name something like Soj-nya-fjord. There's a little train that you can take up the mountain there, that stops so you can stand on a rickety platform and feel the spray of the unexpected waterfall on your face, and watch the rainbows flicker in and out of sight. You can't hear anything above the noise of the water, and I remember thinking that it was so beautiful. I'd take my husband and see if I remember right.

Help Koko the gorilla (fine animal gorilla) go live in Hawaii. Probably a lot of research into where to send money. Mainly to help chimps. Maybe some to help people. Probably.

There are a lot of things I would do, I suppose. I'm no different than anyone else, really. Except that there would be a big contribution to the Socialist Party in my particular list. Maybe a house in Sweden. Or Canada.

It's fun to play pretend, for a little while. Sometimes I even think it's worth a dollar.