Dream big for a buck

Tonight at 8:00 p.m. is a record $370 million lottery draw. (The winner won’t be announced until Wednesday morning.)

I’m a declared anti-gambler, but I don’t think buying a lottery ticket qualifies as gambling because the chances of winning are 1 in 175,711,536.

I bought a ticket so Luca and I could discuss what we would do with the money. I told him that the plan I had in mind when I paid for it was to buy him his favorite soccer team (Inter Milan). His eyes widened, glazed over. He smiled maniacally. Then he mumbled that the team might not be for sale, so we moved on to making a list of things we could do in case that didn’t work out. Here is an excerpt:

- We’d extinguish our mortgage.
- We’d extinguish Luca’s brother’s mortgage.
- We’d give his parents a million dollars.
- We’d give each of my parents a million dollars.
- We’d replace our carpet with hardware floors.
- We’d buy a small apartment in SF so we wouldn’t have to drive to the office.
- We’d buy a small apartment in NY.
- We’d buy a house in Italy, maybe near the sea (I want it in Puglia because the food there is stupendous.)
- I want to reserve some of the money for random, anonymous acts of kindness. For example, the cleaning lady in our office building would find 10,000 dollars in her pocket one evening.
- Luca wants to create a foundation to aid in the fight against Global Warming.
- I want to create a foundation geared towards animal welfare.
- We would stay at our jobs, but take off a month out of the year to travel. We’d invite friends to come with us.
- I’d put my friend Rachel on a permanent retainer so I’d never again have to feel I don’t know what to wear.

Your turn. What would you do if you won 370 million dollars? It’s pretty unlikely, I know. But someone out there is going to win. Why can’t we assume, just for an hour, that it will be you?