By the time you read this I will probably already be a multi-millionaire. Life has reduced me in recent months to paying my ignorance tax by shelling out a couple dollars, when I have actual cash money and not just fake plastic one world general store script, and getting the Megamillions tickets. At one point when I started, I'd be all hazy-brained, fantasizing about spending millions, but really, to be honest, I am so beaten down at this point that I'd be stoked to score a quarter million, pay off all my debt, set everything on fire, and basically hit a reset button.
Well anyways, I usually either get my lottery tickets at the Food Lion self-serve machine or at the country store at the end of the road here. I had picked up my oldest kid from homeschool philosophy club, and I further schooled her (Ice Cube in Boyz-n-Tha-Hood style schooling) on the Socratic method, and promised to dig out my copy of The Last Days of Socrates, which was my jam back in high school, and we hit up the dumpster for some veggies for the chickens - nothing much there, a couple of packages of organic lettuce and a couple heads of cauliflower, dropped off a Netflix at the post office, and headed home. They just paved the area back roads, but obviously budget woes have hit the state hard, because rather than the actual paved road they use for primary back roads, they used the weird loose gravel paving method usually reserved for secondary back roads like we live on proper. Makes me wonder if someone logs on our road and it starts chunking up if they'll even fix it. There's a busted guardrail half a mile from here that's had bright orange safety barrels for nine months now.
At the end of the road, I stopped into the country store, leaving my daughter to enjoy some instrumental Mastodon in the truck, to get three tickets for the $62 Megamillions. This laid back little short pit bull build redneck dude works there, which usually in my experiences means he's gotten too many DUIs, lost his license, and can't drive to a for-real job. Country stores usually don't have regular dudes working them. There might be the one sort of 100 mph recovering cokehead guy who usually owns it or manages it for his grandma or something, but not regular laid back and wasted redneck dudes. I told the guy I wanted three easy picks for the Megamillions, and I noticed on his right forearm a rough tattoo I'd not noticed on holmes before, of a leprechaun smoking a joint.
"Alright to put 'em on the same ticket," he asked me. Sure. So he does his computerized ignorance tax payment thing and gives me my slip. As he's handing it to me, I notice on his left forearm a sexy slut leprechaun lady wearing an outfit like Elvira but green, and really short, showing off a nice amount of cartoon tattoo legs. Little pit bull redneck guy says to me, as I take my ticket, "Best of luck to you."
Obviously, this was one of those magical moments that changes one's life completely, blessed by this spritely yet stocky Southern leprechaun-spirited man who sold me my lottery tickets. I'd like to think I'd give him $100,000 once I cash in my ticket later this week after it hits, but I'm sure if I went back there, he'd be gone. And I'd ask the chubby, loud-mouthed lady who works around lunchtime since she the only one that knows how to use the pizza oven, and she'd say, "No one like that works here." And I'd press because he's worked there for months now, and she'd go, "I wish I had some of what you been smoking!" and she'd laugh, looking at the guys from the logging company waiting for some chili dogs, and I'd walk out, bewildered.
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