Assignment 21-Eliot Smith

     At this very moment, somewhere in the universe, a tired, strained man is worrying for the future.  He is worrying for his life, his health, his family.  He is remembering how fast he spent his last paycheck, and how fast his next will be nullified as well.  He worries himself to a sweat over the impending dues of his life, and realizes that he cannot spend on himself...for he lacks the funds to buy what he pleases.  He is in a rut, and sees no way out.

     Like every other night, however, he pushes his thoughts and worries to the back of his mind to relax, to enjoy the small bit of freedom he currently has.  He reaches his hand into his old jeans pocket, pulls out a crumpled piece of thin paper and tosses it on his plastic desk.  Though his current life had left him doubting the existence of the force of luck, he had always stuck to his same set of lucky numbers--these were the numbers printed on the paper.

     The lottery was the only source of entertainment, although diminishing, in which he was able to engage.  It was his only origin of chance; his whole life had, up to this point, been one bland routine...but the lottery was different.  It was an infinite number of random numeral combinations strung together in a line of wonder, and it was this that drove the man to the gas station across the street every week, and motivated him to open his computer at this exact time.  It was this pinch of spice to his everyday practices that punched the website into his internet browser.  And it was this same wonder that lifted his head from the keyboard every Thursday to compare his numbers to the numbers on the screen.

     In one last comparison of the paper and the pixels, he stared into the gray city outside his window, and knew in that moment that his life had new opportunity.