“Hey man, you won the lottery!”

It’s Saturday morning, and I’ve got a 4 1/2 hour drive scheduled for Rochester.  The day before, I had purchased five Quick Pick Mega Millions lottery tickets at my local news counter, Coulson’s on State and Broadway.  I usually don’t check my tickets the day after the lottery; if I happen to be at a convenience store or a bar that has a lottery connection, I’ll pull the ticket out of my wallet, I’ll place the ticket’s bar code in the available optical reader, the reader will beep “SORRY NOT A WINNER,” and I’ll think for a second about why the optical reader knows so much about my past.  Hee.

This Saturday, after I filled Cardachrome’s tank with unleaded, I stopped into the Cumberland Farms and picked up some travel snacks – a bottle of diet cola, some nuts, a bag of potato chips.  And then I remembered that I still had the lottery ticket in my wallet from last night’s drawing.

I didn’t see any available bar code reader, so I asked the cashier if he would run the ticket through his lottery terminal.  He took the ticket, smiled at me, and put the ticket in the terminal.

Suddenly, I heard the terminal play the opening notes of “We’re In the Money.”

“Hey man, you won.”

And in that quick second, I immediately thought of everything I would do with that $300 million.

• I would search every classic car show from Carlisle to Pasadena, until I found a cherry Pontiac 6000.  Preferably one from 1991, although the LTE special edition had a swank digital dashboard…
• I would purchase the Washington Avenue Armory and resurrect the Albany Patroons, and place them either in the D-League or in the PBL.  And Derrick Rowland would coach the team, and the Armory would be packed every night with appreciative basketball fans.
• I would buy every dilapidated building in the South End, in Arbor Hill and in north Albany and refurbish each property until it looked like a cover model for Architectural Digest – and then I would contact the Albany Housing Authority and offer the keys and the deed to each property to whatever family needed a home and shelter.
• I would re-build J.B. Scott’s on as close to its original location; then I would hire U2 as the first concert in the new building.
• I would make a charitable donation to the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in Sharon, Pa., to allow them to operate for the rest of the foreseeable future.
• My daughter Cassaundra and her friend Kelsie would never have to work a day in their lives ever again.
• Harriet Gibbons High School would reopen as a fully-funded and independent high school.  And anyone who graduated with a Regents diploma would receive a full scholarship to Hamilton College.
• I would purchase the rights to the TV show Firefly and recast it as an anime.  That would be cheaper than trying to extract Nathan Fillion from his role in Castle.
• I would do a hundred thousand things with $300 million.

And one second later, the cashier told me – “Yeah man, you won.  Ten dollars.”

Ten dollars?

Well, apparently I hit two numbers and the mega-ball, which meant that I won a sawbuck.

And in the span of a second, my dreams were condensed to – “Well, I’ll use the $10 to pay for my chips, my diet cola, and some mixed nuts.”

The cashier nodded and rang up my purchases.

And then I thought for a second.  And I asked for one more thing.

“Hey, can I please get a $2 Win for Life ticket?”