Come on, Lucky Sevens!

I think it’s time for me to buy a lottery ticket.

It was once commonly understood that the “American Dream” was to have a nice job, nice house and nice family. It should also be widely accepted that this is no longer the case. Instead, more people dream of simply falling upon a large sum of money. Add me to that list too. I have a nice house, job and family, but a truly dreamy scenario would be not having to work too hard (if at all) to maintain the aforementioned nice house and family.

Yeah, greed may not be good, but it sure as hell is real.

Anyway, I don’t play the lottery very often, largely because the odds of winning are so unreal. My dad and brother used to play Powerball with each drawing, using the same numbers each time. They once won $5000, which sounds pretty nice, but how long did they play before they actually saw some windfall? (That’s a rhetorical question. I know it doesn’t matter how many times you play; you technically have the same chance each drawing regardless of how often you’ve gone to the well.)

But I think I might be in the good grace’s of God today – on Ash Wednesday, no less.

Consider this: Late last week I stopped at Wendy’s and my total was $7.77. Two days later I got in my car and found that my mileage was 77,777. Lucky fucking sevens across the board. Weird.

Then, the next two mornings I awoke at the exact same seemingly-random time, 4:42 am. There were a couple of times each night/morning when I briefly woke up to roll over, adjust the covers or pillow, etc., but the first time I looked at my phone on each of those mornings it was 4:42am.

What are the odds?

Well, consider that I slept for about seven hours each of those nights/mornings. The first was from about 1:30 – 8:30; the next was about 11:30 – 6:30. The odds of waking up at any particular moment during one of those 420-minutes spans is right around one-quarter of a percent. Now, think about how improbable it is to wake up at that exact time two mornings in a row. Try about six ten-thousandths of a percent.

Can the odds of winning the proverbial ‘big one’ be much worse? I’ll let you know after checking my tickets tonight. But I don’t think I’ll bother holding my breath.