Mega Millions Night

Once upon a time there was a little girl who never felt that she was good enough or smart enough or pretty enough to be or do anything. Her childhood was no better or worse than millions of other average childrens’ childhoods; she learned not to take risks, to keep her head down, and to go along to get along. She never learned how to fail because she learned early how not to try: you could either do a thing or you couldn’t, and if you couldn’t, you just never tried again. Risks were for people who could afford to take them.

She was married and divorced twice. She had no children, very coolly and deliberately. Her last romantic partner died after fourteen years together, during which they did not get married because both of them were fed up with the idea of marriage.

She didn’t go to college until her fiftieth year, 2010, and she stayed in school for twelve years, graduating finally with an MFA in Creative Writing from a local private women’s college. She’s now sixty-two years old and is back to where she was in 2009 when she decided to go back to school in the first place: convinced down to her bones that no one will hire her for any work because she is not corporate, because she’s fat, because she’s old, and because the loss of several teeth is off-putting. She’s spent all of her inheritance and is overwhelmed with fear, in spite of many offers of assistance.

She’s waiting to win the lottery; hoping and praying that tonight will finally be the night. She’s waiting for her Hollywood moment and has been waiting for her Hollywood moment all her life. She has so many plans — not the least of which is to buy her old college back from the East Coast broniversity it was given to buy its current president who, apparently, doesn’t believe that womens’ colleges are going concerns these days — which of course explains why she wanted to be the president of a women’s college in the first place, doesn’t it?

I have friends who need help, who are in some terrible positions because we don’t look or act or believe the part of corporate players, or we just never met the right people who could help us or they’re just people who bad luck follows because they’re working off debts from previous lives. I don’t know why their lives now are hard, just that they are hard and I want to help. No parent and adult child should share one bedroom in a house full of people who hate them. No one, of any age, should live in a shed in their parents’ back yard because of a mistake they made that they’ll be paying for now for the rest of their lives. I want to help. If I’m living in my car with no income I can’t help.

So I’m sitting, on my couch which doesn’t fit me and may in fact be hurting me, lottery numbers close at hand, sympathetic magic drawings of checks — to me and to the buyer of my alma mater so I as part of a committee can be its new owner — and my house, a written list of things I’ll do when I win, a deed of trust and a newspaper article all mocked up as examples of what I want to accomplish when I win to prove that I’m worthy of this money that I’m not just going to go out and spent it on yachts and clothes and drugs and cars, there’s too much that needs doing in my own little corner of this great big dysfunctional country that I nonetheless love because for all of its failures — and there have been plenty — we’ve also had some pretty cool successes although if you were to ask me what successes right now I might be hard pressed to tell you. Vaccines for COVID, maybe?

I’m sitting on my couch hoping and praying with everything that’s in me to win just a part of the Mega Millions jackpot tonight, not the entire thing, just 5 hundred million out of a billion dollars, because I know there are other people all over this country who need help as much as I and my friends do, who have lists just as specific as mine, who have friends and family they love as much as I do who could also use the boost this kind of money would bring them and they deserve it as much as anyone, including me, but I’m selfish, and I want to win, for me and for my friends, and so I can go back to school one last time and get my Ed.D. so I can apply for jobs that I’m, finally, qualified for: higher education administration. I’m no teacher. I’m an office type and if the president of my alma mater is any example, I can do a better job than she did and I deserve the chance to try but I can’t until I get that Ed.D and get this money and buy back our school and kick her lying butt out of our school and our lives forever.

And I’ve promised that if I win, and once I get our school back, I will give up the anonymity that I’ve guarded so closely all these years and I will take this giant risk and put myself out in the world, I will make myself visible — a thing I have assiduously avoided my entire life. My safety and security are the sacrifice I will make in order to …. I’m not sure what the words are. In exchange for this thing, I will give that thing. Quid pro quo? Tit for tat? In every fairy tale, there’s a price to gain your hearts’ desire, and giving up entirely my comfort zone is the price I’ve set in order to gain the ability to buy my school, get it back on track, and hopefully be a better president than the one who sold us up the creek.

If not…. then maybe my time in the world is done, at 62 years old with no real skills and no way to contribute to our society. The first 13 chapters of Bumble are up over on Substack; maybe Shonda Rhimes or someone will find them and turn them into the book/play/TV series/movie I never could. I have papers and notes all over the place showing the places I wanted the story to go. Maybe it’s just time to let go and be ok with being done. 62 is a good long life, don’t let anybody tell you different. I’ve had fun, I’ve had adventures, I’ve had magic, but I”m greedy and I want more. Just once I want that Hollywood over the top lightning strike moment of the Universe saying I SEE YOU, HERE YOU GO NOW GO DO GOOD and then proving that I’m worthy of the risk the Universe took.

It’s a quarter to 11:00. The numbers will be drawn in 15 minutes; I’ve been writing for an hour. I’ll post this now, step to the loo, then go to YouTube and watch which numbers are pulled before heading to the Lottery app and testing my numbers that way, just in case.

I wish us all all the luck in the world.