The Luckiest Man
My name is Tom Walsh. Not a common name for a guy in his late twenties these days, but I was named after my grandfather. My mother and her sister adored their father. He died way too young, and they agreed whoever had the first child would name him Thomas. My mom won the baby lottery.
My life has been a rollercoaster of a ride to this point.
No, really.
Let me explain.
Sarah and I were high school sweethearts. She did much better in school than I did and went off to college while I worked manual labor jobs out of high school. She loved books and studied library sciences, eventually getting a job as a school librarian.
Yes, I was married to the hot librarian. Sometimes fantasies do come true.
We both came from what many would term 'lower middle-class' homes. I do not say that as a bad thing. It taught us to be frugal with our money, because that's the way our parents were.
I was lucky to get into one of the bigger construction firms in our area and was slowly working my way up the ladder. I proposed while Sarah was still in college. It took a couple years of saving after she graduated for us to afford a modest wedding. We saved for a few more years after that, and about a year ago, were finally able to afford a small home.
It needed a lot of work, but I was handy and felt I could make it into the home we both envisioned in a few years' time. I had to balance the money needed to do the upgrades I wanted with the money we were putting away to have a baby.
I know some people would say we should have just had a baby and figured things out along the way. But we had both seen the strain that finances put on our parents, and the fights that money caused. We didn't want that for ourselves.
It also allowed us to enjoy our time as a couple, and we truly did.
The term 'soulmates' gets thrown around a lot, but in this case, I believed it. I'm sure if you asked Sarah back then, she would have said the same.
I know some people want to go back in time and change things. Change mistakes they've made. I've certainly made plenty, and while the idea of changing my mistakes sounds enticing, I'd rather go back and just live in that time again. I was truly happy.
I'm sure you're guessing, based on my earlier rollercoaster comment, that the happiness didn't last. You'd be correct. It only took a couple of years for it to implode.
Actually, it imploded in one single day; we just didn't know it at the time.
What happened?
We won the lottery.
I know spending money on the lottery is foolish. The odds being so astronomical that you were more likely to be struck by lightning - twice - than win one of those big lotteries.
We didn't think we'd win. We did it as a form of entertainment. We made it a game in which the night the lottery was drawn, we each had to come up with something we'd buy.
It started out as standard stuff...a house, a nice car, but then we both got into a groove where we'd try to come up with something ridiculous, just to make the other laugh.
I once told her I would buy a tank to make the commute to work more entertaining.
Sarah wanted to hire a personal chef and trainer to make sure we ate healthy, didn't have to clean up the kitchen and stayed in shape. This one didn't make me laugh, it made me think. It wasn't a bad idea, actually.
We probably spent about ten dollars a week on the lottery. In my mind, at that time, it was worth every penny for the laughter it bought us.
Actually checking the numbers became an afterthought.
The drawing we won happened on a Wednesday evening. We didn't even check the numbers until that weekend.
I still remember standing in front of the stove, cooking us both some eggs. The bacon was already cooked and sitting on a plate.
Sarah was sitting at our kitchen table going through the mail, and then the tickets, when she suddenly exclaimed, "HOLY SHIT!"
"What?"
"I think we won!"
I just chuckled, then commented, "You're still not bringing all those cats here."
During our most recent discussion of what we would buy, Sarah said she would buy the local animal shelter she followed on Facebook 'to save all the adorable cats.'
"No, I'm serious!"
I walked over to the table, determined to find the numbers she transposed, or the incorrect date for the numbers she looked up.
Regular people didn't win the lottery. I'm sure everyone has that friend who is into all the conspiracy theories. Mine is Andrew. He asserted that it was all a scam to take more money from those who could least afford to lose it. We laughed him off until he asked us, "How many lottery winners do you know?"
"Well, there aren't that many lottery winners."
"There are hundreds of people who supposedly win a jackpot of a million or more every year. Don't you think we would have heard of one around here by now? Or at least someone who knows someone, who knows someone who won," he countered.
It did make me think.
I leaned over Sarah's shoulder looking at the ticket and the numbers on her phone. I kept going back and forth, looking for the mistake. I must have done it a dozen times.
"Well!?"
I couldn't find the mistake, but my brain just wouldn't accept what I was seeing. Sarah, growing frustrated with my lack of acceptance, pointed out each number and its match on the ticket.
Then she leapt up from the chair and wrapped me in a hug.
We spent the rest of the afternoon Googling what to do if you won the lottery.
Evidently, the first thing you're supposed to do is sign the back of the ticket. We did that, then put it in a Ziplock bag so we didn't accidentally destroy our newfound wealth by knocking a cup of coffee onto it. We didn't have a safe in our house. We didn't have anything valuable enough to necessitate one, so we hid it in Sarah's sock drawer.
*****
The next few weeks were obviously a whirlwind. Our Googling told us we should hire a lawyer that specializes in dealing with lottery winnings.
That was a shock to me, I guess there's a lawyer specialty for everything these days.
We ended up talking to two different lawyers and picking one. It was still a niche specialty after all, and not that many lawyers were licensed for it in our state.
He helped us navigate the legalities. In our state you must claim the prize yourself, you can't have a trust claim it. We didn't mind as we weren't planning on keeping it a secret.
I should also mention that we won one of the 'smaller' jackpots. One of the monster, hundreds-of-millions drawings having been won a week or so before ours. After all the taxes and the lump-sum payout, we still had tens of millions. More than enough to live very comfortably for the rest of our lives.
If we were smart with the money, that is.
*****
We told our parents before we even claimed the prize. Even though we told them not to, they started telling our relatives and their friends.
Neither of our families were rich. Neither of us had that rich relative that so many people seem to have. We were now the rich relatives.
The problems that neither of us envisioned, but I'm sure most of you have already figured out, started almost immediately. Relatives started showing up. Some we didn't even know we had. All asking for money. All came with a down-on-their-luck story. Some of them were probably even true.
We knew what it was like not to have much, and they were family, so we helped some of them out. That only made it worse.
After the fifth 'cousin' we didn't know we had showed up, we moved forward with our plans to move. The lawyer suggested a gated community so we wouldn't have to deal with unexpected visitors. We also used the opportunity to move out of the northeast.
I loved to golf. Sarah had played tennis in high school. We chose a community in Florida that had both.
The Florida real estate market was red-hot at the time. We had never shopped for a multi-million-dollar home before, so had no idea if we overpaid or not. But it was real estate, and that's always a good investment, right?
*****
We invited our parents and all our friends down for a long weekend at our new place, all expenses paid. We rented two Airbnb homes not far from ours. One for the parents as we assumed they would not be interested in partying as long or as late as we would, and one for the rest of our friends that wouldn't fit in our house. Including friends and family, twenty people ended up coming down on a Thursday morning.
The last two months had been such a whirlwind for us that we hadn't much time to hang out with any of our friends. Sarah and I were both excited to have everyone down.
The girls planned shopping trips, and I planned two separate days of golf for the guys.
The party atmosphere started Thursday evening after everyone arrived, and I have to say, it was a great time. Our huge kitchen opened up into our two-story great room. On either side of the floor-to-ceiling windows that dominated the center of the room were doors that opened to the outside patio and pool. One side had a spacious covered veranda with ceiling fans and an outdoor kitchen. The other side was the hot tub.
It was paradise.
Given how everyone gushed, and how quickly they got comfortable and started enjoying themselves, I think they agreed.
We had hired caterers for the food and a bartender, sparing no expense for our friends. Even with the help, I kept moving between the groups of friends and family, having conversations and seeing if anyone needed anything.
At one point, I moved back inside and made my way toward the kitchen. Sarah and a group of her friends all had wine glasses and were talking exuberantly around the kitchen island. I stopped to see what the conversation was about.
It took me a moment to figure it out, but they were talking about the reality TV series Below Deck. For those of you who don't know, it's a tv show about the life of the crew on a superyacht. I only knew this because Sarah occasionally watched it and told me about it when I queried her on it.
"You and Tom have the money now. You should totally do that," said Shannon.
Shannon was the friend everyone seemed to have that was perpetually tan, no matter the season. I worried about her long-term health, as she had been going to tanning salons since she was a teenager, but I had to admit, it looked good on her. With olive skin, long dark hair, and piercing blue eyes, she was very attractive. She was also one of Sarah's closest friends.
"Do what? Rent a yacht? That's crazy!" Sarah replied.
"Why is it crazy?" Amy replied. Amy was almost the opposite of Shannon. Pale skin that would burn if she spent five minutes in the sun. She had flame red hair and stood barely five feet tall. What she lacked in height, she made up for with her bubbly personality.
The lively banter continued about the idea and drew some of the guys into the conversation. I stood and just listened passively, enjoying how excited the idea seemed to make everyone.
