“One more and I’m a millionaire. Come on, Liberty Bell, please, please, please, please, please, please!”
Oh Homer, I know your pain. My workmates and I have a lottery syndicate going at the moment and every day we say the mantra…. “we neeeeed to win lotto.” In some weird way it provides me comfort knowing that if I keep playing the odds, maybe the odds will reward me for my patience. On the other hand, I am probably just being a world class chump. 
I’ve had incredibly detailed, vivid hullucinations of what I’d do with all that money if I did win. Right down to little gift bags I’d give my loved ones as they were secretly whisked to remote locations for a surprise holiday. (Don’t you want to be my friend if I win??)
Once I almost did win. I was working next door to a newsagent and had bought myself one of those overly complicated scratchie tickets. I think it was a monopoly one. So you had to to scratch the dice and then move that many spaces. Over and over I did this until it revealed that I had won….$50,000.
I can tell you that you can pretty much spend $50,000 in roughly 3.6 seconds. Well I did anyway. I was throwing a wild party, paying off my debts and buying a new wardrobe. The newsagent was just about to close so I jumped up, ran over to some co-workers waving the ticket in their faces, breathlessly mumbling about winning $50k. I had wild eyes. Wild, wild eyes.
Bursting through the newsagents doors I exclaimed “I think I’ve just won $50,000 on a scratchie!!”. The owner looked skeptical. He ran the ticket through the little machine and my heart stopped. The machine made that “no, you’re a loser” sound and my dreams were shattered.
The moral of that story is…don’t tell anyone you think you’ve won anything. The entire next day I was approached by co-workers saying “Jen, I heard you won some money yesterday!!”. I had to sheepishly admit to them I’d made a mistake. Albeit a very dramtic one.
I could give up all of my lotto winning dreams. However, my friend once said, if you stop dreaming, you die. I plan on living for a while yet… so come on Liberty Bell!!!!
the modern woman's society 
Just Rambling
February 28, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Haha love this story! Especially the moral!
But hey, I don’t know… did you see Lost? That dude won the lottery and then they crashed on some kind of weird island with polar bears. I don’t want that to happen to you! So IF you win the lottery, make sure you don’t get on any plane, OK? 😛
Except if you plan on leaving for Amsterdam! Yes!!!
I love this quote, because I think your friend is right… “hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die…life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly”. Yup, and that’s the way it is!
Jen
February 28, 2012 at 6:42 pm
I LOVE Lost!!! But yeah, they did all die in the end so…. I promise not to board any aircraft! Is that where you are? Amsterdam?? Maybe I could just take a cruise ship there…but then there is the Titanic. 🙂
Jen
February 28, 2012 at 9:32 pm
Oh, and I love your version of that saying. It’s beautiful. How do you say it in Dutch?
Richard
February 28, 2012 at 9:42 pm
So why didn’t you win the 50k? Was it a typo?
Jen
February 28, 2012 at 9:58 pm
Lol. User error. Too much scratching or not enough. Not sure.
Viciously Sweet
February 29, 2012 at 4:00 am
Oh that is heartbreaking. Maybe someday you’ll strike it rich and swim around in a vault of money like Scrooge McDuck!
If I actually won something cool, I’d probably pass out, and regain consciousness and somebody would have taken it.
Jen and Tonic
February 29, 2012 at 4:14 am
There was a story here where a man claimed he had picked the winning lottery numbers on a 100 million dollar jackpot….but lost his ticket. I’m not sure if his story is true, but if it is—WOW! I would kick myself for life over that one.
I often think about what I would do if I won the lottery. I think hiring Clive Owen as my full-time servant would be my first order of business.
Jen
February 29, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Surely that’s a big sign from the universe to that guy?
LOL…you could have a whole harem of Clive Owens for that much money.