Some people have all the luck. This week a 50-year old man named Trent Larken won a 319 million dollar state lottery. Mr. Larken had gone to a local convenience store to buy his ticket. When he reached over to grab a chocolate candy bar, another rude person cut in front of him. Mr. Larken was upset and started to say something, but he decided to let it go. “Life is short, why should I let others’ rude actions upset my day,” he said.

The person in front of him had bought the lottery ticket that Mr. Larken would have gotten. Instead, Mr. Larken got the next ticket which turned out to be a winner, a 319 million dollar winner. So it seems, in the end, both people got what they deserved—the patient, kind man got the money, and the rude person got nothing.

--------------------------------

Mr. Parry Faraday was down on his luck last year after he lost his job of 15 years. The economy was bad and lots of people were getting laid off. Being unemployed was driving Parry crazy. “You can’t pay your bills, you don’t know when you’re going to run out of food money. You go to a hundred job interviews, then go home and wait for calls that never come. And when you do have a moment of time to yourself, bored, with nothing to do, all you think about is being unemployed and having no money. It’s enough to drive a man crazy. I mean, I love working, I just don’t have any special skills, nobody wanted me.”

Nobody wanted him, that is until now. Mr. Faraday won the state Lotta-Lotto lottery , worth 34 million dollars. “I had 20 dollars in my pocket that my sister had given me. She had told me to do something fun with it, so I had bought two lottery tickets, I got lucky, for sure!” Now, Mr. Faraday is not bored at all. He gets loads of calls and emails from family, past friends, old classmates, mere acquaintances, and total strangers. “It’s driving me crazy,” he said, “but in a much better way than being unemployed. I can handle this kind of crazy.”

--------------------------------

Kerry Watson, a single mother of three, was feeling quite stressed. “I had a rough day at work. No matter how fast I worked, the paperwork just kept piling up,” she said.

When she got home she helped her son with his math homework, and after cooking dinner she had quite the headache. “I went to the store to buy some headache medicine, and at the counter, I just weirdly and suddenly decided to buy a lottery ticket. I don’t usually buy those things.”

It turns out, Kerry had bought the winning ticket worth 3 million dollars. “Now, when I have a rough day, I won’t think twice about calling out for pizza!”