Sometimes, I find the lottery to be depressing in the way it functions as a regressive tax, taking higher proportions of poor people’s money than rich people’s, since it is the poor who keep holding on to that hope, and they have less disposable income to begin with. But sometimes, lottery-winning stories are just enough to convince me, “why not let people keep hoping? Sometimes it works!”

Last Wednesday, a 50-year old Ventury county man who works at his local Ralph’s grocery went into a Chevron and asked for two $10 lottery tickets, as he always does– one for himself and one for his father. But the clerk made a mistake and gave him one $10 ticket, and one $2 ticket. She asked if he would like to cancel the transaction and start over, but he said no, he’d give the $10 one to his father, and just add $8 more worth of numbers for himself.

Then, after his lunch of Chinese food yesterday, he was inspired to check his lottery numbers when his fortune cookie read, “You will enjoy a luxurious life.” Sure enough, he had won $10,000,000 with the $8 ticket he had accidentally purchasd. He said he has no immediate plans for how to spend the money, but will continue to work at Ralph’s because he doesn’t want to “become a lazy slob.”

info via The Ventury County Star

Oh, and if you haven’t seen Waking Ned Devine, the movie that these images are from, you absolutely should. It begins when an elderly Irish man wins the lottery and then dies promptly upon hearing the news, and hilarity ensues as his lifelong friends consider faking his identity to claim the winnings, and inevitably the whole of their small town ends up involved in the moral dilemna.

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