Are You Cheaper Than Me? Diary of a Cheapskate

Ooh, so close!

Several weeks ago, I awoke to the exciting news that a single winning ticket for the $270 million Mega Millions lottery jackpot had been sold in my state. Because even glamorous cheapskates need their beauty sleep, I hadn’t stayed up to watch the televised drawing—nor could I catch all the numbers being babbled at me now by some unnaturally perky radio deejay.

Still, I felt confident enough about victory to consider throwing financial caution completely to the wind. No more rising at 4 a.m. to catch the Early Bird toilet paper special at Costco; now I could just pretend to be spending time in the book aisle while actually consuming three times my body weight in pork taquito free samples like the rest of civilized America.

Fortunately, a little voice in my head counseled caution before it was too late (it’s the same voice that tells me tea bags always taste better the second day they’re used). Needless to say, I didn’t win. I’ll never win the lottery, which is, after all, a game of complete random chance with impossible odds.

Also, I lack that certain “something.” Careful research I subsequently conducted by watching CNN and reading a National Enquirer that a “friend” accidentally “left in my car”—um, three weeks in a row—reveals that most big-time lottery winners share certain key traits:

• They hail from teeny-tiny towns that only have one store, which sells cold milk and live bait. The owner is the exclusive lottery vendor. And the mayor/director of homeland security.

• They never change the numbers they play, which are a complex combination of their eleven grandkids’ birth dates and the amount of times their forty-two dogs have had distemper shots. Or vice-versa.

• They always announce they’ll use their winnings to buy a new truck. Note the distinction. Not a truck. A new one.

Meanwhile, I’d been letting some soulless big-city convenience store computer choose my numbers. And my foreign import car barely has a glove compartment, let alone a gun rack in the back. No wonder I haven’t struck it rich yet!