I won! I won! I won the lottery! Seven dollars on a $10 ticket. I’m taking it as a lump sum, not that they even asked my preference. Now I’m cleaning the living room so it won’t look like a pigsty when the photographers arrive.

I can’t tell you how long I’ve dreamed of this moment. I am the original guy who never wins anything, but finally, all those years of buying lottery tickets each week has paid off.

It’s not like I’ve been throwing that money away. A lot of it goes to keep the state from raising my taxes to pay for things like lottery commissioners, and what’s left goes to our educational system, which needs improving.

Why, oh why, was I never taught how to calculate the odds of winning the lottery? If I buy two tickets, does it double my chances of winning?

“If you play the same numbers on two tickets, and why would you, your odds stay the same,” says Sue, who actually paid attention in school. “If you play two tickets with different numbers, you have a gazillion ways to lose but only two ways to win. At the track, a dead horse could get better odds than that.”

Instead of practical math, I took band in school and dreamed of turning professional. But the days of making the big money playing the glockenspiel have gone the way of buckled shoes and powdered wigs, though I still wear them around the house.