Winning numbers

Many of us have said it when we see pictures of people who have won the lottery, holding up gigantic checks and smiling from ear-to-ear, "Aww man, why wasn't that me?"

Well, first of all, we have to buy tickets to win.

I don't purchase them too often but I do every so often. The most I have won is five bucks - and IF I remember to take it back to the store, I will buy tickets totalling that amount hoping for a bigger prize, rather than getting cash. Dumb. I have never won anything on the second round.

On the rare occasion that I purchase a Lotto ticket, I usually use the same numbers that my husband and I put together when we were still dating - the month of our birthdays (which is the same), the dates of our birthdays, the month and date we met (aww, how cute is that?) and the powerball number is the age we were when we met!

Crazy how some people select those numbers - and yet some people seem to be so lucky with the numbers they select.

For instance, there was an Arizona man recently who selected six numbers and bought six Lotto tickets with the same numbers; all were winners.

The tickets were good for a half dozen second-place prizes. and he picked up his $6 million haul over the course of three visits to the Arizona Lottery's headquarters.

Strange or just downright luck?

And then there is the story of the Alabama woman who bought a scratch ticket and rather than seeing for herself if it was a winner, she inserted it into the machine and it revealed the ticket was a non-winner. So she discarded it in a spot the store's owner paced non-winning tickets (they were not calling it a garbage can). Surveillance cameras show another woman picking up the discarded card which ended up being a million dollar winner. She of course collected the money ($680,000+ after taxes) and spent a wad. The woman claiming to have purchased the ticket took her to court, saying she was the owner of the ticket - and the judge ruled in her favor.

Now the woman who cashed in the ticket first has been ordered to repay all that she spent - except she says she can't because among other things, she and her husband are unemployed.

The purchaser of the ticket is not giving an inch and has said it is her money, she deserves it and she is not going to forgive the woman who pulled the ticket out of the trash.

What a shame. If I ever won a wad of money, I would share with many, many people (though my husband would probably not approve of that and take me to court to get that money back!) I feel sorry for the woman who will get nothing.

You know what, all this talk, I think I am going to go out and get a couple tickets and look very close at whether or not its a winner. If there is a winning ticket, you'll hear about it.