Close only counts in...

When I was not working in the classroom with the kiddies, I was known to organize a faculty event or two. Being a direct descendant of
'You can't win if you don't buy a ticket' Florence,
I started an 'anyone who's interested' group lottery club going and 33 people [staff and personal friends,too] chipped in to share the tickets, and when we won...Well, the school was definitely going to be hiring!!
I bought the tickets when the jackpots got large enough to split 33 ways, and Flo checked the numbers for us since she was in on it,too.
I remember the time that Flo called and told me that we had a winning ticket. I was at a friend's house[another one in on it and everyone had copies of the numbers.] They got out their list of numbers...
"Which one...what numbers?
She started reading off the numbers-one at a time-and I repeated them outloud- and "Holy Cow! We have all 6 numbers!"
At that point, there was dancing around the table going on until Mom finally got the word thru the telephone receiver that she was reading the winning ticket's numbers...NOT..the winning numbers!!
We just about had a group heart attack!
We still laugh about that one!
Anyway, we did win sometimes, like $22.54 or even $121.00. Since it would be ridiculous to split those winnings by 33 people, small winnings went into a 'kitty' that was used to buy extra tickets when the jackpots got much larger.
After about 3 years, I decided that maybe people's lottery enthusiasm was beginning to fade. There was $10 in the kitty, and I bought 10 quickpicks. I had changed to purchasing quickpicks when I realized that if the lottery jackpot had gotten big, and someone's lucky numbers had indeed come thru...and I hadn't bought the tickets...
Well, I thought I would have to go into the witness protection plan.
I bought the kitty's last $10 in quickpicks, and the next day I handed the ticket to the clerk to have the machine check it and then we would be done. The machine began making the 'printing' noises indicating that some money had been won. The clerk said,"You've won something...seventeen sixty eight...but you will have to go to the regional lottery center for the money because I can't do that big of a payout."
I answered, "You can't pay out $17.68?"
"Not $17.68" she said.."1768.00...seventeen hundred sixty-eight dollars. You had 5 out of 6 numbers!"
UNBELIEVABLE! Finally!!Wahoo!!
Something that could be split 33 ways. Everyone won about $50, and that was great!!
And it made a 'great conversation story' to share when we realized that we missed the 6th number by 3...we had 23 and the winning number 20!
Were we crabby because we came so-o close to being on the Today Show??
Nah...Everyone knows that a common pattern for lottery winners is that after a little bit they are broke, unhappy, friendless, generally worse off than before!!
And there you have it.
And yet... we were so-o close to all that misery!!