4. The Windfall

Don't be underneath when it comes crashing down

The windfall.

The cash mountain.

The stuff dreams are made of.

Mucho moola.

Whatever you call it, wrapping your head around anything in the millions is next to impossible. Most humans who are not Stephen Hawking just can’t grasp the reality of numbers that large and they really don’t understand probability.

I was one of those semi-regular Lottery players who thought he understood the game, but really didn’t. You know the guy.

He doesn’t play every week but probably buys a ticket or three each month. He thinks all the talk about formulas and systems is idiotic but he cares enough to know what games offer the odds that are merely improbable as opposed to infinitesimal. You know, the difference between being struck by lightning and being struck by lightning while eating a vanilla milkshake on a pogo stick.

A guy that is more than willing to speculate in a little break room discussion about what he’d do with the big one but he’s not so obsessed that he’s got a plan drawn up on paper. Yeah … I was that guy.

I liked the little thrill I got from imagining how I would quit my job, or dreaming about the property I would buy, or the places I would go, but I never really thought it would happen.

Never. But then it did.

It was a Thursday morning and I was at work when my life changed permanent.

The day before I stopped by a convenience store near my office — I had a bad habit of eating three of their $1 tacos for breakfast twice a week. I kidded myself that balancing them with a banana and some bottled water meant I was eating healthy. During most of my visits to the store I would pay with a $10 bill and sink whatever was left over into either a scratch ticket or a numbers game. I preferred the Lotto because the odds were more reasonable and the advertised jackpot was the actual amount they paid — the state covered the taxes.

But on this Wednesday all things went awry and my routine changed. First off, the bananas looked mushy so I passed on them; then they were out of the type of scratch-off ticket I normally purchased; and finally, someone in West Virginia had just won the Lotto prize the week before and the current jackpot was barely above $1 million.

Now let me tell you, before all this happened I was not a rich man. I had a fairly secure job with a good salary and through the vagaries of my career and the housing market I owned property in three states; however, net worth speaking I was in negative territory to the tune of around $500K in home loans. So a measly million dollar jackpot just really didn’t get me that enthused.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I would have been thrilled with any win over $10, but a million dollars just was not going to change my life that much. Multiply that number by more than 200 though and you’re talking about a very different story — and now, dear reader so are we.

With barely a thought I passed by the Lotto ticket and said these fateful words to the clerk, “Just put $5 on a SuperLottoMegaball ticket for me.” The rest is kind of a blur, maybe because that day, like so many other days, was a mundane series of tasks and work conversations. Or maybe like some physicists and philosophers believe, a new universe was born in that instant.

I checked the ticket the next day while I was sitting at my desk getting organized for lunch. I navigated to the Lottery website and found the winning numbers. I checked the mega money ball number first.

Third line from the top of the ticket was a match and I knew I had won at least $2. Then I read over the rest of the numbers, matching them more carefully with each numeral. As more and more of the numbers on the third line were correct my heart started racing and my stomach dropped like I was falling from a great height. I just kept looking back and forth from my computer screen to the ticket with disbelief. I must have checked the numbers 10 times before I calmly put the ticket in my wallet and put my wallet back in my pocket.

I didn’t scream, or yell, or shout. I sat in my office with the door mostly closed and thought for nearly 20 minutes about what to do. As I thought I scribbled some notes and figures on a legal pad. The paper was a fixed point in the maelstrom that my life had just become so I clung to it and wrote these words:

Lawyer — Trust Plan?

Accountant — Taxes?

Mortgages + Debts = $536K

Prize Amount — Annuity or Lump Sum?

Who to help? What to do next?

I wrote down some names of relatives and friends under the “Who to help?” line and when I couldn’t think of another thing to consider, I stopped writing and opened my office door. It might surprise some of you to hear that I didn’t quit my job on the spot or call my wife. Instead I went back to my desk and finished clearing my morning e-mail then completed a few tasks that I knew my boss needed me to take care of that day.

It wasn’t that I loved my job or did not love my wife, but I could predict how my workday would progress, and I could not know how Zoya would react to my news. You really can’t underestimate the comfort of familiar routine when your world’s just been turned upside down. Besides, I wanted to be face to face with my wife when I told her. I do much better at gauging her moods, thoughts and intentions when I can see her.

On that first day, the only person who I told my news to was an attorney I know who handles Trusts & Estates work. I walked to his office after lunch, the ticket securely in my pocket, and asked if he had a safe. “Of course,” he said, “We keep our clients’ tax files, wills and estate plans under lock and key.” He showed me a substantial looking walk-in vault, explaining that the building had once been used as a bank branch.

“OK,” I said, “I’ve just won a substantial sum of money. I want you to draft a trust plan for my wife and I, including perhaps a few other family members as well, and lay out a plan for claiming the money in the name of the trust. I don’t want my name publicly attached to this money in any way.” I pulled out the ticket and laid it on his desk. His eyebrows arched as he reached out to touch it. “I’d like you to make copies of this ticket along with a notarized letter accepting my business as a client for the purposes I’ve just laid out. Then I’d like you to store the ticket in your vault until it’s claimed. Also, could you outline what your work for the trust and acting as administrator to claim the ticket will cost?”

He looked at me appraisingly for a moment, and then said, “Certainly can. I’m glad to hear you’ve given all this some thought. First off, can you tell me how large the claimed amount will be? That will give me some idea about some of what we’ll have to do first. What banking institutions will be best to use, and so forth.” I told him what the ticket was worth and he just looked surprised and made the most human but unlawyerly sound I could have imagined — a low whistle.

I nodded and we got down to business. An hour later I exited his office with copies of the ticket in my pocket, plus various letters, forms and notarized receipts. Two more copies of the ticket and the paperwork were in an envelope being sent registered mail to my house. I let out a satisfied sigh as I walked down the street in the spring sunshine. For the first moment since this morning I let the magnitude of what had happened wash over me.

During a flight to Cleveland I once read an airline magazine story about a famous fashion designer. The story described in glowing detail the fabulous people the designer knew and the wonderful way he decorated his home. I was getting rather bored with the recitation of this man’s amazing life when the writer finally let his subject speak. One of his clever phrases that stuck with me was, “I have a wonderful relationship with money — I use it to buy my freedom.”

These words ran through my head over and over again as I walked down the street watching people rushing to and fro. Some may have been on their way to a leisurely lunch; others were rushing to meetings or back to their office. A few men working with construction equipment in the street were clearly laboring hard in service of some necessary engineering. I could not be sure of their backgrounds, choices and motivations — why they were headed where they were headed, or doing what they were doing — but for the first time in my life I felt as if any choice I made was solely my own, with no one forcing me to be someplace or do something.

It was a crystallizing moment. I sent an email to my work team saying I would be out of the office the rest of the day and then I turned off my phone and just walked.

I walked by my office and did not stop.

I walked down past restaurants and stores, casually window shopping. After a while I happened upon a store with the same name as a famous boutique Zoya and I had once stopped at in New York. I remembered her admiring a colorful Hermes scarf, tying it around her lovely neck and then putting it back once the clerk told her the price.

I walked into the shop, asked to see their Hermes scarves and then walked out 15 minutes later with the closest approximation they had to what Zoya had been trying on that day, carefully wrapped in a beautiful orange box. I stashed the box in my work bag and made my way to the train station for the trip home. As the train click/clacked along I sat in silence thinking just what I would tell Zoya, and how.

(stay tuned for more)