Happiness - What will you do with the $640 Million Jackpot?

This was my Laureate speech at Toastmasters on Happiness.

Today’s theme is happiness… I would like to say this, that two weeks ago we were very happy with our lives. Then the Mega Million Mania hit us.

We started thinking what will happen to our lives if we hit the $640 Million Dollar Jackpot.

My wife immediately started to select the numbers for the Lottery. She took out a notepad and started jotting down all the birthdays and anniversaries of everyone in our family.

She darkened the room and lit a candle to call the spirit of her dead Grandmother to help us out in fixing the numbers.

“Grandma please go to the Lotto Commission and make sure the balls with our numbers get picked. I have selected the birthdays and anniversaries of all your children and grandchildren so it will be easy for you to remember” She whispered.

Grandma spoke to her and told her that she was in the Mutare Nebula, some 200 light years from Earth and that she will try to make it to Earth on time for the Drawing. She wanted know the co-ordinates to the Lottery Commission’s office where the drawings are held as she didn’t’ know how to use the new GPS.

What will we do with the windfall? “Let’s buy a jet” my wife said turning the pages of the Robb Report. She placed a few calls to the dealers to see how much it will cost us to maintain a jet and the findings were not good. “But where will we go? We don’t like to travel” she said.

Well… Forget the Jet, let’s get a Yacht. We can park it in the Newport Beach Harbor. We spoke to the Captain of Horn Blower Cruises and found out that we will need to have a staff to maintain the Yacht even when we don’t use it. We don’t like to go in the open seas. It makes us dizzy! That was a bad idea!

Our life was suddenly in turmoil. $640 million dollars! What will we do with it?

Let’s give some of it to our needy family and friends. My wife said jotting down names “Let’s exclude so and so. They were never nice to us.” And on and on we went trying to find ways to use the Millions that will make us happier.

I am happy to say that Grandma could not make it on time to pick the balls we had selected.

When she arrived three numbers had already been picked. The other three she goofed. She picked the last three numbers correctly but one of them was not the Mega. So we won $7.00 in the drawing!

Our life was back to normal. We didn’t have to think of Jets and Yachts and relatives lining up in front of our doors. We heaved a sigh of relief and were glad to be where we started – Happy!

Thank you!