Lottery Fever and Mary's Facebook

I noticed something about lottery fever; it was interesting listening to people describe, in detail, what they would do with the money. A certain dream fever was unleashed. There was a smattering of cars, homes, travel, but generally the dreams were pretty modest. No one talked about climbing Everest or going to Hollywood and making a movie or paying for a medical education. Fascinating, but the most fascinating part was the lack of greed.

Folks were talking about what they would do for others; their parents, their kids, their friends. Everybody I talked to would give me some of their winnings. I guess that's why I never actually bought a ticket, I didn't need to, or I was just too lazy to go inside someplace and plunk down my dollar, or I no longer have dreams that lottery money can buy. I told one woman I wouldn't know what to do with millions of dollars and she answered she was perfectly willing to spend the rest of her life trying to figure that out.

All those unleashed dreams of good will has to fill the world with a little bit of afterglow. At least, it can't hurt.

Mary put on Facebook this quote from Daniel Dennett, an evolutionary biologist, and since I do believe in genetics -- passionately, I'm segueing from lottery to luck:

Freedom Evolves:

Every living thing is, from a cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on occasion today. Your presence on the planet testifies to the roll luck has played in your past.

Thanks Mary.

Anyone remember Dory Previn's song The Empress of China? It's the same theory with a sadder ending, but then so was Dory.

I remember when Stephanie was so ready for a child and Roger was dragging his um... feet, so to speak. I told him Stephanie not only wants a child for herself, but also, it's hard to resist 26,000 years of biological drive. I wasn't smart enough then to think back to the dawn of life on Earth.

Our ancestors didn't get shot in the Sherwood Forest, didn't drown after a canoe tip over, didn't get eaten by a saber-tooth tiger, hanged by a Salem judge, nailed to a cross, lost at sea, freeze during a glacial age, or hit by a meteor.

Mom and dad were lusty, so I guess we come from a long line of lusty sons a bitches. Lucky us.

That of course hasn't protected us from broken bones. I don't know where this came from but my mind filled with all our broken bones. Everything from dad's back to James clavicles, to wrists, arms, legs, shoulders, ankles. Josephine broke everything from the pelvis down, but then that might occur if you step in front of a moving vehicle. For years we joked about how James seemed to take all the families broken bones like some kind of bone voodoo doll. We can't say that any more, so remind me of your broken bones. What have you broken? Anyone break a pinkie finger?

Somewhere in Tennessee a customer lives on Light Pink Road. How lucky am I to live in the same world with Light Pink Road? And Jane sent me some Vera Bradley jumbo binder clips just because. And Connor is coming over Easter, so I bought a chocolate bunny, got out some bunny books and stickers and am planning a balloon surprise if Christian cooperates. He mastered balloon creations a long time ago, just after he mastered juggling and before mastering skateboarding.

I read The Sibling Effect, pretty interesting, especially due to the fact that I am rich in siblings, but somehow I think it missed the heartbeat of siblings of our sort. It didn't address poverty much, or families with lots of siblings, and there was too much evidence to disprove what he had just given evidence for. Sometimes science sucks.

I also read A Visit from the Goon Squad for book club. I loved the Pulitzer Prize winning book, but where the jacket talked about Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption...blah, blah, blah, I just felt like it was people accepting their life. ...And there wasn't enough family in it. People go through life with family around, parents and siblings.

I haven't seen a great movie lately, any suggestions?

Final thought of the day: I saw a truck heading up I-5 with the company name of Nancy Baer. I asked myself, in the manly world of trucking how many times do you see a woman's name emblazoned on the side? And that made me wonder just how many women drivers are out there in this great big beautiful world?

We aren't so limited as folks, and the world is actually huge.

Happy Easter to all you lucky folks and thanks mom and dad.