Lottery
A few months ago, I found a lottery ticket sitting on top of a pizza box from Papa John's. Earlier that day, my wife and I had been talking about what we would do if we won the lottery. We almost never talked about the lottery, and we'd probably bought tickets only three times in our lives, all just for fun. And now, a lottery ticket had somehow appeared before us.
My first thought was, What a strange thing for Papa John's to give away. Then I realized there was no way a pizza chain would give away lottery tickets for free. Was it a mistake by someone at the store or the delivery guy? I had no clue. Maybe I just didn't want to dig too deep into where the ticket came from.
It was Saturday evening, so the winning numbers would be announced in a few hours. I checked the date on the ticket one more time to make sure it wasn't from the previous week.
"What are the chances of a lottery ticket showing up right after we talked about winning?" I said.
My wife asked what I would do if we actually won with this ticket.
"We should never tell anyone. Ever. Not even our parents," I said.
I was also worried that whoever had bought the ticket might come knocking on our door once he found out he'd lost the winning ticket. What if this guy played the same numbers every single week? If he knew which numbers were on the lost ticket, we were screwed.
Anyway, I told her we had to maintain our current lifestyle because word would spread fast and people would start asking us for a share.
"Hey, I can't even think of what I'd buy if I had all that money. Oh, wait, can I buy a PlayStation? I'll just get a PS5," she said.
As I chewed my pizza, I couldn't think about anything but the announcement in three hours. After finishing our meal, we went back to washing dishes and taking care of the baby. I put the ticket in my backpack so I wouldn't lose it. Who knows? Maybe this ticket had a habit of flying away from people.
"Isn't it time yet?" my wife asked.
It was already 8:30 p.m. The show was supposed to start in five minutes. Since we don't own a TV, I opened my laptop to watch the announcement live. But there was a baseball game on, and a message at the bottom of the screen said, "Due to the Asian Games, the lottery announcement will be delayed. Thank you for understanding."
"Enough with this shitty game. Just announce this week's lottery numbers," one viewer commented.
I thought maybe they would announce the numbers between innings. After waiting twenty minutes, I didn't want to waste any more time. I could hear that the baby had woken up. I closed my laptop and went back to putting her to sleep.
By then, I'd stopped thinking about the ticket. I was gently rocking her tiny body, making shushing sounds and patting her bum. I was too tired to keep watching the meaningless game and reading all the angry comments. I decided to check the results the next day.
The next morning, I'd forgotten all about the lottery ticket. Around 10 a.m., I suddenly shouted, "Lottery!" and finally scanned the QR code on it. My wife seemed to have completely forgotten about the excitement we'd shared over the free ticket.
"You did not win," the message said.
Out of the twelve numbers on the ticket, only one matched the winning numbers. I wasn't disappointed. I tore up the ticket and sprinkled the pieces into a trash can filled with diapers and cat litter. That's when I thought I should write about this experience someday.
Today, on our way home from an hour-long walk in the park, my wife, our baby, and I saw a line of parked cars with their hazard lights flashing.
"What's going on? Is there a popular restaurant or something?" I asked.
Then we noticed a tiny shop selling lottery tickets.
"That store must have sold a lot of winning tickets," my wife said.
A middle-aged man got out of his car and ran toward the shop. The parked cars occupied one of the road's two lanes, all for a chance to become this week's winner.
I thought about the lottery ticket on the pizza box.
"Should we buy one too?" I asked.
We both turned around and stared at the shop for a few seconds.
"Nah. Not buying lottery tickets is the real way to be happy," she said.
We turned away from the lottery shop and continued walking home. I took a water bottle out of my bag and handed it to her.
"Sorry, I totally forgot to give you this at the park," I said.
We shared the water and some tteok we'd bought a few hours earlier. The baby strapped to my wife's chest let out a long, squeaky cry.
"She knows. She knows we're almost home," my wife said.