Seeing that nice young man from Mission, South Dakota hit the big Powerball jackpot reminded me of a story I wrote a couple years ago after another big money prize had been claimed. Since we’re in to Summer re-runs (or REPEATS as we used to call them) I thought I’d do a REPOST for those who might have missed it.Sometimes when I have a hard time falling asleep, I close my eyes and imagine that I had just won the Powerball Lottery Jackpot and 300 million dollars.
Oh, man…what would I do with all that money?
I know it’s not very Christian to have such fantasies, “the love of money being the root of all evil” and all that.Plus there’s the biblical warning about it being easier for “a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.”But I can’t help it.
We may not want to be..and most churches say we shouldn’t be..but the majority of us are, by nature, materialistic and measure success by the amount of “stuff” we have or the size of the amount in our checkbook.
My first thought when I saw someone had won the 314 million dollar Powerball Saturday night was..I suppose they’ll take the lump sum and after taxes only wind up with about a third of it. That just doesn’t seem fair.
Like they won’t be able to squeak by on 114 million.
Anyway, back to my fantasy.
I’ve just won 300 million dollars.
Linda and I are jumping around in our now too small house screaming for joy.
“What’s the first thing we’ll do with our riches?”
“We’ll give 10 percent to the church.”
“Which church?”
“I don’t know pick one.”
“Don’t you suppose churches might have a problem receiving money that came from gambling?”
“Not the Catholics..didn’t they invent bingo?”
“Shut-up..you’ve always had a problem with my religion.”
“Okay, let’s forget that for now. How about the kids?., we’ll set them up financially for life, of course.”
“Who should get how much? Some need it more than others..do they all get the same?” “Will there be hard feelings? What about inheritance taxes they’d have to pay?”
“I don’t know, we’ll work it out..stop fretting about it.”
“I’m not fretting, I just don’t want the kids to be hurt by our attempts at generousity.”
“Maybe we better call a lawyer."" How much will that cost? Won’t they try rip us off?" " I don’t know. Who cares? We’re loaded.”
“Well, I suppose we should probably build a mansion somewhere in town and fill it with the finest furniture, a pool and plasma TV’s for every room”.
“Yeah, like you don’t watch enough TV already!” “Sorry…I guess you’re right..we should get a nice new place but I wonder if our friends will think we’re just showing off and maybe not want to be our friends anymore?”
“Who cares..we’ll find new friends.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Cars..I want lots of cars. Oh, and motorcycles. I’ve always wanted a Harley. Now I can have as many as I like.”
“Why.. you can’t drive more than one vehicle at a time.
“You just don’t get it do you?” “Heck, we can even buy a private jet airplane and fly anywhere we want.”
“Who’s going to fly it?”
“We’ll hire a pilot.”
“Wouldn’t it be kind of stupid to hire a personal pilot that we’d probably only use a couple times a year?” Besides, where would we go?”
“I dunno..Europe, I suppose.” “We could buy a fully-staffed yacht and sail to all the fancy ports along the Mediterranean.”
“Oh sure, I can just see the two of us pasty-white overweight Midwesterners roaming around by ourselves on that big boat in our swimming suits”
“Besides, I’m scared of the water, caviar makes me gag, champagne is overreated and I sure wouldn’t feel very comfortable being waited-on hand and foot by strangers in white pants.”
“Well, for cryin’ out loud, we’ve suddenly got this fortune and there’s nothing you want to spend it on.”
“You don’t have to yell.”
“Sorry..we have never argued about anything like this before.”
“I know. Everything was fine until we got all this money.”
“How would you feel about just giving it back?”
“Doug…Doug..wake up!”
“You were having that bad dream again weren’t you?"
