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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Fate / Luck / Serendipity
- Published: 07/27/2020
A Dollar In The Grass
Born 1947, M, from Oceanside, United StatesA Dollar In The Grass
Recently, while taking my dog, Charlie, for his morning walk around the apartment complex where I live, I stumbled across a dollar bill lying in the grass. Even though it was damp from the morning dew, I stashed it in my pants pocket.
“Sorry,” I said out loud to the unknown person who had dropped it. “If I knew your name, I would give it back to you. But since I don’t know who you are, I’m keeping it.”
Except, I didn’t exactly.
By early afternoon, the dollar had dried enough in my pocket to where I felt I could use it to buy a Fantasy 5 lottery ticket. Since I can never seem to get past one number on any ticket I buy, I was hoping for at least a free replay. That would mean two numbers out of five. Well, guess what? I got it!
Smiling happily at my Fantasy 5 replay ticket, I went about my daily routine, until that night when I checked the winning numbers for that day. Son of a gun, I had another free replay!
This went on two more times. I figured that would be it. No way would I be winning any more free replays. I was right . . . and wrong. I didn’t get another free replay. Instead, I got three numbers, which meant I won sixteen dollars! Holy cow!
So with my winnings, I bought another couple of tickets. Yeah, I know I could have bought a lot more, but I kind of thought that maybe I shouldn’t push it. Anyway, with the leftover fourteen dollars, I bought myself a nice little Chinese fried rice dinner. And guess what? This time, on one of the two tickets I had bought, I hit four of the five numbers for just over three hundred dollars!
Whoa! In fact, double whoa!
I couldn’t help but wonder how much longer this was going to last? Probably not much, but it sure had been fun so far!
With the three hundred dollars, I bought five Fantasy 5 tickets, and won two more free replays and another sixteen dollars. I was so ecstatic about my run of luck, I felt like a high roller in Vegas. Of course, I knew this couldn’t last much longer. And I was right. This time I hit all five numbers. That added up to twenty-five thousand dollars!
With my eyes popping and my head buzzing, I thought, no friggin’ way!
I was starting to get a little freaked out. Was I about to have some kind of major accident, or told I had just six months to live? Was that why I was having such a fantastic run of luck? I became almost paranoid about leaving my apartment, as well as going to work. But then I realized there was nothing I could do about it either way. So, I decided to continue with my life, with one difference. I wouldn’t buy any more lottery tickets—at least not for a while.
But then the bug bit me again, and by accident, I bought a Powerball ticket when I hit the wrong button on the machine in the supermarket. Oh, well, I thought, there goes two dollars, but not quite; I ended up with one of the four winning tickets—ninety million dollars before taxes!
I couldn’t believe what had happened to me! My head was practically exploding; my body was vibrating, and I kept laughing hysterically. This was insane! Absolutely insane!
They say not to go hog wild if you win the lottery, and I didn’t. In fact, I did all the things I was supposed to do, like get a lawyer and a financial advisor. But, of course, that didn’t stop the “relatives,” known and unknown, from coming out of the woodwork. Eventually, I had to quit my job and move out of state. I ended up in a tiny town in northern Oregon.
Instead of buying a big expensive home, I rented an old fashioned log cabin in the woods, and started seriously pursuing what had been only a hobby up till then. I was trying to write short stories for publication. Knowing I needed help, I joined a local writer’s group. Before long, I was dating one of the members. Her name was Sheila Cummings. Like me, she was trying to write short stories, only hers were romances, while mine were science fiction.
Then this one night as we were leaving a meeting, we spotted a dollar bill lying in the grass.
“Aren’t you going to pick it up?” Sheila asked, as I started to pass it by.
“No way!” I said, vigorously shaking my head. “It’s bad luck.” A lie, of course, but it sounded convincing, at least to me, especially after my history with the lottery.
She looked at me, her eyebrows furrowed. “How could it be bad luck?” she asked, as she reached down to snatch the dollar before anyone else could get to it.
The next day, her car was T-boned by a vehicle that had run a red light. Miraculously, she wasn’t hurt, but her car was dead on arrival.
“I guess you were right,” she said the next time she saw me. “Maybe I shouldn’t have picked up that dollar.”
It scared me to think how correct I had been, but then in order to make myself feel a little better, I said to her, “I’ll tell you what. How about I buy us a couple of lottery tickets (she knew only a small portion of my history with the lottery). Maybe between the two of us, we’ll get lucky, and you’ll be able to buy a new car with no payments.”
She was skeptical, of course, but guess what happened?
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