It Wasn't I ... But If It Were

By this time you know that Wednesday's lottery drawing for the $1.5 billion PowerBall jackpot has been completed.  There were three winning tickets sold, in California, Tennessee and Florida.  Having not been in California, Tennessee or Florida this week, you may rest assured that I did not buy tickets at any of those places and was, therefore, not one of the lucky winners.

That did not prevent my Best Girl and I from having had the same conversation that went on in households throughout the USA in the past couple weeks, as the jackpot went crazy and a fever of lottery ticket buying swept the nation.  That conversation was the one about what you would do if indeed you won.

I believe we discovered some things about ourselves, actually.  Because once you get past the giving money to the kids and our two surviving brothers and close family, it ultimately gets back to us.  How would our life change?

It was astonishing to me how hard some of the answers were.  When you are relatively simple people, you are that way partly because of values that you hold.  Others would go out and buy five Mercedes, perhaps.  I drive a Nissan Rogue and rather like it.  Surely I would upgrade that, but why would I need another car?  Ruth would find a Nissan Cross-Cabriolet convertible, her favorite car.

The hardest answer -- one we have not yet even come close to addressing -- where would we live?  We are already preparing to relocate anyway, so we're in the mindset of picking a place and have talked about being in an area near enough to the ocean, further south, cheaper, gated community with golf around.  We want to go there anyway because it's where we want to be.

So now suppose that we were a billion dollars richer.  Where would we live?  Golf, ocean, all that stuff we wanted because we wanted it.  How would having nine figures worth of wealth change that or somehow make us not like that life.  Warren Buffett is richer than Croesus and he lives in Omaha, Nebraska.  Bill Gates is richer than Buffett and he is in Seattle.  If we want to go to southeastern North Carolina, why would having money change that?

At night, my Best Girl and I sit on the couch and watch TV shows we have DVRed in the previous few days.  We do that because we like to do that.  We don't need a butler to bring us our coffee; I'm perfectly capable of getting up and getting my own coffee.  To be honest, I believe that very little in our daily life would change terribly much.  I like to watch sports and I'm pretty comfortable with the setup I have to watch it now.  How would a 20-room mansion make that any better when I live alone with my wife?

I will tell you that each of the two of us had a "cause", or something that we would allow ourselves to use a large amount of the money to do.  My wife is a wonderful person, and she would like to create a foundation to assist middle-aged and older people who care at home for an elderly parent.  The situation, as I have written, is very much something close to home, and I know she would like to find a way to be able to help home care-givers create at least a little life.  She doesn't know where the money would actually go, and it's moot now having not won, but it was a subject dear to her heart and she would have worked to make it better, for those who had walked in the same shoes she did for two years as a 24/7 home care giver with no relief.

I would have made an offer for a piece of the Boston Red Sox.  Just a minority interest, and with no real desire to interfere.  I have been a Red Sox fan since I was two, even though I never saw New England until college (no one understands it).  Because I would still watch the games, every night. I enjoy watching the games.  If I had $2 billion I would still watch the games.  But I'd like to be a part of it, too.  Thirty-nine years ago I was an anthem singer at Fenway Park, a fun gig if there ever was one.

That's me in the picture, dressed in typical 1977 anthem-singer garb and posing before a game in the Red Sox dugout with Fred Lynn, the MVP outfielder of the team back then, lest you doubt my story.  No one would voluntarily let anyone see them with that mustache and that attire if it were not true.

But I digress mightily.  Ruth and I never did figure out where we would live, or if we would simply go on with the plans we are working on for this year to relocate to where we will ultimately retire.  We couldn't figure it out, because money or no, we like what we like.  If we can be happy picking up shells on the beach and not being rich, well, we'd be just as happy picking up shells with a fat bank account.

It just wouldn't change us, nowhere near as much as we might have thought.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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