I did something for the first time ever tonight: I bought a lottery ticket. Sure, I’ve done the little scratch-off ones when people have bought them as gifts for me, and when my mom played lotto when I was a kid sometimes she’d let me pick numbers and fill in the little scantron form, but I’ve never actually played the lottery myself. In all honesty, I think of it as a gullibility tax. (The slightly more cruel variant on that is ‘stupidity tax,’ but I know smart people who play the lottery too, so I go with a less catty nickname.)

Anyways, as it turns out, I’m pretty gullible myself sometimes (ask my coworkers) so I thought, what the hell, I’m going to buy a lottery ticket. I marched right up to the lottery machine in the local ex-White Hen (sorry, 7-11, it’s always going to be the White Hen to me)… well, more properly I went in the door and got in line behind the other guy who was waiting for the one guy working to check out all the people who were buying actual things so he could buy a lottery ticket, and waited for my turn, but I did that, anyways. And then I asked for two Mega Millions quick picks (because I figured their pseudo-random number generator was at least as likely as my brain to pick the 1 set of numbers out of 175,711,536 possible sets that would match), and then gave them two dollars and they gave me one slip of paper with a little bar code on it. (I feel robbed. Two “tickets,” I should have two slips of paper to show for it; to hell with the trees!) And now I shall wait until tomorrow at midnight, or more properly Saturday morning, because to be honest, I cannot be bothered to watch television at midnight to see if I won the thing there’s no way in hell I’m going to win.

But, I have to say, the novelty of buying a lottery ticket has been interesting. It’s been sort of fun thinking up how I would spend money if I didn’t have to worry about it, since I first thought of buying a lottery ticket two days ago. If the cost of a really lovely daydream is only $2, how can you argue with that? That’s value. Most of my dreams (cough, cough, ENGLAND, cough) cost much more than $2. I suppose if I played regularly, the dreams wouldn’t be nearly so lovely; it would be routine and boring and maybe I’d just skip it entirely in the drudgery of buying my habitual ticket and shoving it in a pocket while fetching a coffee on Monday mornings, like clockwork. But for a first-timer, it’s been fun to sort of lose myself in a little bit of pointless dreaming.

And of course the tradition of winning the lottery is that then you go out and spend your ridiculous amounts of money. I don’t want a big house, and I like my car just fine (okay, maybe I’d have it detailed). So those are not really in the cards for my theoretical jackpot. And there are philanthropic things I’d do for friends and family, but then I’d lose the surprise if I just went and blogged about it in advance, so where’s the fun in that? So here it is, my list of Ten Selfish Things I’d Do if I Won the Lottery (or, I should say, if I win the $140m jackpot that is the only lottery I’ve ever played or am likely to play for the foreseeable future, because seriously, it really is a gullibility tax, y’all, and I am gullible but it takes real guile to trick me repeatedly):

• I’d pay off my mortgage. (This is arguable as a selfish thing, since it’s my mom’s house, but it’s my name on the paper, so I think it counts.)
• I would pay off my student loans and not take out any more, ha ha ha, sorry Department of Ed making big bank (ha) off my interest.
• Speaking of which, screw this whole sticking around and trying to qualify for a work permit thing, if I had like $50m cash on hand I wouldn’t need to work constantly — I’d totally try and get a visa immediately and move to the UK. Maybe finish my degree there. Or maybe I’d try and buy the Swinford toll bridge from its new owners before they can get really attached, and spend the rest of my life collecting 5p pieces one car at a time, and catching up on Eastenders in my little toll booth. I’m just saying, I’d have a little more leeway.
• But until I did that: FULL SEASON SOX TICKETS, BABY, and going to allllllll the day games. Box seats, too; third base line, right by my guys’ dugout. And all the churros and Beers of the World I could handle!
• I think I’d buy a new iMac. Just walk right in to the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue and buy one, not worrying about MacWorld or WWDC or random Steve Jobs announcements obsoleting it immediately, and take a taxi straight home, because I would totally be rich enough to do that.
• I would renew my city sticker, ‘cos I’ve kind of been putting that off since, um, June, when they screwed up my paperwork and I have to go stand in line to tell them that my 2001.5 Volkswagen Passat four-door passenger sedan did not, in fact, overnight turn into a truck. Chicago, I love you, but sometimes you are honestly just plain chock-full of idiots.
• I can’t believe I am running out of ideas after only 6 things. Oh, all right, fine: I’d buy actual diamond replicas of some earrings I inherited from my grandmother when she passed. (We had lots in common; a shared love for shiny, sparkly things was only one of them.) They’re costume jewelry but I love them because they were Grandma’s. I actually bought CZ replicas of them a while back, because I was afraid of losing the real ones; every time I put the fake fakes on (which is most days; they’re my default earrings) I think of Grandma. And I’d buy real ones, but cruelty-free diamonds are not cheap, and I am a college student. So if I won the lottery, I’d buy real ones just like them, but in expensive fancy-pants Canadian nobody-died-for-this-rock ones that sparkled all over the room. I think she’d be behind me a thousand percent on this one. — I was kind of planning to make that my college graduation present to myself (I survived! Now I get sparklies!), but what the hell, if I win the lottery, I can cheat a little bit on the timeline.
• I would totally go to France. I’ve never been, and that is like the second thing that people ask me after they learn that I can speak French. It’s starting to feel a little stupid that I’ve never gone. Maybe I’d go to Alliance-Française de Paris and take one of their immersion courses; I’ve wanted to do one of those for ages. Nothing against my beloved Alliance-Française de Chicago, but you know, there is something to be said for learning to wear Hermès scarves with the native folk. (And, okay, maybe I’d go to Québec too, because, truth be told, the Quebecois accent is a little mystifying to me and I’m starting to think that I really will have to spend some time with it before I can figure out how the heck they get from ‘hiver’ to what sounds more like ‘hivaille’ to me.
• That reminds me. (Merci, Tricot Machine.) I will buy every record I have ever wanted to buy but couldn’t because I couldn’t afford to buy music at the time. That includes one-hit wonders like Jesus Jones, because my freshman year in high school they released “Right Here, Right Now,” and I loved that song, and every other album that I don’t already have that was on that list — which I still have, because I carried around a little notebook in high school to take random notes on, and I still have it, because I was a freak who loved high school. and also, like, massive shit-tons of classical. If I didn’t already own the Police box set it would be everything they ever did because I loved them so, so much in the 80s and never got to buy any music because I didn’t have an allowance, so no money until I got a job in 1994. I’m sure there will be mistakes along the way — I know Pablo Honey was on that list, and I think that album is pretty pointless (no offense, guys) now that I own it — but there is no doubting that I loved Pet Shop Boys hard when “West End Girls” came out and I love them even harder now, so, I’m pretty sure the music purchase will work out, net, in my favor.
• Is that ten yet? Shit. I mean, I’m sure I’d spend more money if I won the lottery, but going to the Body Shop and picking up a tube of hand cream even though I don’t strictly need it doesn’t quite count, does it? Okay. Ten: I would throw a ridiculous party at my house. You’d all have to put up with my playing deejay (I love teh musicks), it’s a teeny apartment so it’d be scrunched, and I’d invite my family so you might have to listen to my dad ramble about Nascar (for god’s sake, it’s not even a real sport), but I promise top-shelf liquor. And cupcakes. Always the cupcakes.