Tag: If I Won the Lottery

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Lottery by Betsy

If it is the Colorado Lottery we are referring to here, then it is highly unlikely that I will ever win, since I do not play. I gave up playing that lottery after giving away about one hundred dollars in five dollar increments with zero return and asked myself the profound question: “Why am I doing this?” There are better investments for even one hundred dollars which do not require that I give away ALL my capital.

Don’t get me wrong. I do benefit everyday from the Colorado Lottery. We all do. I especially enjoy the bicycle paths and parks and other amenities immensely.

Of the $2.3 billion utilized by the state since the start of the lottery in 1983, 50% has gone to the Great Outdoors Trust Fund, 40% to the Conservation Trust Fund, and 10% to the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife.

Here are a few winners which we all benefit from due to the Colorado Lottery.

Close to 1000 miles of hiking and biking trails built and maintained all over the state.

Open space and land acquisition. Development and maintenance for city, county, and state parks and recreation facilities.

Funding for school health and safety issues.

If we are talking about other lotteries in life–or the lottery of life, truth be told, I have won many times indeed. I had the winning ticket when I was born to the parents that I had. I won when I married Bill instead of Jim or Al. I had a winning ticket when I got my daughter back. I won when I chose to come out. I could go on and on describing the lucky things that have happened to me over my lifetime. Yes, some involved making a good choice. Like, the winningest lottery ticket of my entire life: when I cashed in and got Gill. But face it. Much of life is a crap-shoot. This was very clear to me recently when I chose to have my spine go under the knife.
“There is a 20% chance you will be worse off after surgery. There is a 1% chance of severe damage to nerves, paralysis, or even death,” I was told. True, the odds were on my side but the chance for disaster is always there.

If I win the lottery? If it’s the Colorado Lottery–I won’t. The Life Lottery–I have won, and I do win–most of the time–and I hope to continue my run of good luck.

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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If I Won the Lottery by Ricky

     When I win the lottery, if I ever play, I will do what the majority of people will do; share some with family, pay off the mortgage and other bills, and perhaps buy a newer car. Depending upon the amount won, there may be varying amounts of funds left over after all the foregoing activity. Thus, the following list is what I think I would do if the financial opportunity exists after accomplishing the things in the above list. The list is in no particular order as there is no way to predict the amount of winnings.

     1. Build a private, GLBT, high-rise senior citizen center. Under the ground floor would be a large parking garage part of which is open to the public for a small fee. The resident parking area would have wide diagonal parking spaces for each unit of the high rise. The ground floor would house a super-size grocery/department store.  

     The second floor would house geriatric medical facilities (to include a non-emergency clinic for minor medical issues but staffed by trained emergency room doctors and nurses). These facilities, except the clinic, would be open to the public.

     The third floor will house two swimming pools; one for residents and one for non-residents (for a membership). Both swimming areas will also have typical gym exercise equipment and other related facilities.

     All floors above would consist of living spaces of various designs to accommodate senior GLBT citizens and their partners and dependents (if any).

     Separate stairs and lifts will keep the general public out of the residents and their “guests-only” areas. The top three floors will be dedicated to: senior and diabetic-menu eating facilities; a solarium; recreation rooms and areas.

     2. Build a similar structure for “troubled” GLBT children, adolescents, teens, and their parents (if needed). This structure would not be open to the public, except for the medical facilities and therapists, and the medical facilities will be tailored to meet the needs of pediatricians and therapists. There would also be private school and day care facilities on site. 
     The upper floors would have some apartments designed for the homeless who had children who qualified to live in the facility so that families could stay together. Other apartments would be for single teens who don’t have families or who need shelter. 
     Younger children needing to be temporarily away from their parents or whose parents are in long or short-term custody would live in age appropriate small dorms each with a state-licensed dorm mother and father foster care parents and who are official staff so there is no need for them to work anywhere else – the children being their only concern.
     3. Trusts for my grandchildren.
     4. A trust for a budding artist named Edgar, who is 16, extremely handsome, and (as I write this) working as a busboy at a local Mexican restaurant.
     5. Visit England and Australia.
     6. Visit and perhaps move to Tahiti.
© 10 June 2012
About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA

Ricky was born in June of 1948 in downtown Los Angeles, California. He lived first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA. Just prior to turning 8 years old, he went to live with his grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce.

When united with his mother and new stepfather, he lived at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After two tours of duty with the Air Force, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he lived with his wife of 27 years and their four children. His wife passed away from complications of breast cancer four days after 9-11.

He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. “I find writing these memories to be very therapeutic.”

Ricky’s story blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.

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If I Won the Lottery by Colin Dale

If I
won the lottery.   What
do you mean “if”?  I did win the lottery, in 2004.  I was visiting my brother in West Milford,
New Jersey.  I’d gone back there to run
in the New York City marathon.  While there,
I bought a New Jersey Pick Six lottery ticket. 
I won.  The prize was $19,500,000.
 I didn’t take home $19,500,00.  Taxes amounted to $6,825,000.  I ended up with $12,675,000.

The marathon was a bust.  I felt like crap from the start, and dropped
out at Mile 18.  I knew what the problem
was.  It wasn’t lack of training.  The problem was I was getting older.  But I was now a multi-millionaire.  My thought–with aging in one hand and wealth
in the other–how much YOUTH could I buy? 
I’d read a story in Runners’ World about a procedure at the Huntington
Memorial Hospital in Glendale, Wisconsin–not a surgery where you get artificial
parts but a procedure called tissue
transference where you get whole new parts, real parts, in a sense, the body of someone 20, 30 years
younger.  The procedure cost me $188,000;
then, $22,280 for the hospital stay, $3,350 for post-op rehab, $970 for
medication, $450 for hotel & meals, and $16 for cab fare.  The total cost of YOUTH: $215,066.  Not bad.

My after-tax prize, if you
recall, was $12,675,000.  $12,675,000
minus $215,066 for YOUTH — I was left with $12,459,934.

Unfortunately, the new,
youthful me needed some new, youthful FRIENDS. 
It would hurt to part with my old old
friends, but what the hell.  I’d seen an
infomercial on TV: “Tired of your old do-nothing friends?” it
said.  “Buy new FRIENDS, fun-loving FRIENDS,
high-energy FRIENDS able to keep up with your high-energy lifestyle.  Buy one FRIEND, two FRIENDS, buy a dozen FRIENDS.  Call for prices.  You’ll be surprised how affordable.  Operators are standing by.”  And so I called.  The cost: $15,134 per FRIEND.  I bought a dozen for $181,608.  I wanted these FRIENDS close by, so I had them
moved to Denver: add shipping & handling at $4,700 per FRIEND, and
resettling costs of $234,000 — the grand total for a dozen new, high-energy,
close-by FRIENDS: $472,008.

After buying YOUTH & FRIENDS,
I still had $11,987,926 left.

What frustrated me next was
my stalled career.  An actor, I was at a
dead-end.  I wondered if I could buy some
TALENT somewhere.  That’s when I happened
to catch Kevin Costner on The View.  He
was saying how after Dances With Wolves
every movie he made got panned.  He was
introduced to an acting coach who knew the secrets of real TALENT.  And now Costner was offering these same
secrets to anyone who wanted to buy them. 
The next day I was on a plane to Costner’s ranch in Twentynine
Palms.  Six weeks later I was winging my
way back to Denver, the new owner of TALENT. 
The cost (itemizing it): $388 in phone calls to Costner, $1,267 for a
roundtrip ticket to California, $6,200 for car rental, etc., $770,000 for The
Intensive (that’s the learning of the secrets), $4,250 for new headshots, and
$45 for a thank you gift for Mr. Costner. 
Total cost of TALENT: $782,150.

I now had renewed YOUTH, new
FRIENDS, and real TALENT — and I still had $11,205,776 in the bank.  

But there I was, in the
summer of ’05, with YOUTH, FRIENDS, TALENT, and money, and no matter how hard I
tried, I still couldn’t seem to earn the RESPECT of people who mattered.  What the hell could I do to earn RESPECT?  That’s when I heard on the radio: “Don’t
earn respect.  Buy it!  Silvan Life Systems
will equip you with the RESPECT you deserve. 
Arrange an in-service with a Silvan life coach today.”  I called Silvan and contracted with the best:
Baron Baptiste, senior mentor.  I flew
Mr. Baptiste to Denver and he stayed with me for a full month.  When he left, I had RESPECT.  The cost: Baron Baptiste’s fee, $937,400.  His per diem, at $420 a day, $12,600.  His CD’s (the full set): $112.  The grand total for a little genuine RESPECT:
$950,112.

***

Now this is getting
long-winded, so I’ll abbreviate the rest. 
I toted it up in the fall of 2005: I was YOUNG, surrounded by FRIENDS,
super TALENTED, and deeply RESPECTED. 
And the amazing part: I still had $10,255,664 in the bank.

Unfortunately, though, the
things I still wanted, when I checked the prices, were a lot more expensive.  For example . . .

I bought CHARACTER.  I found CHARACTER through goodcharacter.com.  They offered a variable-length retreat
depending upon how much CHARACTER you wanted. 
I took the whole enchilada: Kindness, Fairness, Courage, Honesty,
Diligence, and Integrity.  The grand
total, including the prefrontal cortex implants: $1,290,022.

Next I bought LOVE, from the
Yabyummy Institute.  My personal Love
Master David Deidra’s fee, $75,800, his per diem, $3,000; my Joy Buddy Rex
Winter’s fee, $58,000, Rex’s per diem, $2,000; the Sacred Loving Program to
include Tantric Love for the Soul, Body Heat, Heart & Soul, and What a
Difference a Touch Makes, $876,549; plus the Sacred Loving Pleasure Kit, marked
down to $484,650.  Total cost for LOVE:
$1,499,999.

Next came PEACE: PEACE of
mind.  An easy one–expensive, but easy:
eight potions, given by Lakshmi Ganesh Punjam at the Peaceable Dragon Lodge in
Kaski, Nepal.  Each potion gave me a
piece of PEACE:

1) Do not be jealous

2) Do not crave recognition

3) Forgive & forget

4) Do not interfere

5) Endure what cannot be
cured

6) Do not procrastinate

7) Never leave the mind
vacant

8) Never regret

Cost?  The potions, $250,000 each–$2,000,000
total.   Travel: $125,142.  So, PEACE: $2,125,142.

Next-to-last: IMMORTALITY.  This was a weird one.   A guy by the name of Gerald came to my door.  He said he’d give me IMMORTALITY for $4,500,000.  I knew from Angie’s List that he was on the
up & up.  Gerald stayed with me while
he taught me IMMORTALITY.  Total cost:
$4,500,000 for the IMMORTALITY itself; I gave Gerald a $675,555 tip — that’s
15% (seemed fair); and incidentals during his stay (food, beverage, and DVD
rentals): $125,142.  Total for
IMMORTALITY: $5,340,500.

That left me with only one
thing I wanted to buy, but before we get to that . . .

If you’ve been adding this
up as we went along . . .

YOUTH

FRIENDS

TALENT

RESPECT

CHARACTER

LOVE

PEACE, and

IMMORTALITY

. . . you’ll know I’d spent
$12,459,933.  I’d won (after taxes)12,459,934.  I had $1 left.  Well . . .

The last thing I wanted was
HAPPINESS.  How lucky then I found a shop
around the corner where, with my senior discount, I could buy HAPPINESS for
only a buck.

But when I tried to buy it,
the shopkeeper said, that’s going to be a buck seventy-five.

“But I’m a
senior,” I said.

“Don’t try it, friend,”
the shopkeeper said.  “I know you
from around here.  You’re YOUNG, got young
FRIENDS, your TALENTED, RESPECTED by everybody, got great CHARACTER, obviously
in LOVE, blessed with PEACE of mind, and, for all I know, you’re IMMORTAL.  No way you’re a senior.  HAPPINESS’ll be a buck seventy-five.”

“Shit,” I said,
and went home.

About the Author

Colin Dale couldn’t
be happier to be involved again at the Center. 
Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a volunteer and board member with
the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center. 
Then and since he has been an actor and director in Colorado regional
theatre.  Old enough to report his many stage
roles as “countless,” Colin lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in
The Doctor’s Dilemma at Germinal
Stage, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The
Oldest Living Graduate, both at RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
with Compass Theatre, and most recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at the Arvada Center.  For the past 17 years, Colin worked as an
actor and administrator with Boulder’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival.  Largely retired from acting, Colin has
shifted his creative energies to writing–plays, travel, and memoir.