Editor, Gazette-Journal:

I came really close to buying a brand-new Corvette a few days ago. I decided on Tuesday that I would go to the dealer early Wednesday morning. I was going to purchase the Corvette and immediately drive it to the Lamborghini dealer and then trade the Corvette in on a Lamborghini. Just because I could!

At the same time, I decided that I was going to pay for all our grandchildren’s college education and that each one would receive 2 million dollars upon completion of their degree. I mean, what is a few million dollars? It’s just chump change, right?

Next, I would donate whatever amount would be necessary to insure that Mathews County had a beautiful public swimming pool and that it would be well-funded for the future.

I would call the real estate office in town and tell them to start looking for a nice piece of waterfront property in the 3 to 4 million dollar range. The water would have to be deep enough for my 45-foot Sport Fisherman and my 50-foot Passport sailboat, both which I am about to purchase.

Then I started thinking about which charitable organizations I would sponsor. I would give away several million more to them.

The only reason that none of this took place was because the Powerball lottery machine must have been damaged as it picked the wrong numbers. I didn’t get one number right! Not even one number!

We hadn’t played the lottery in years, but as my wife said, "You know we ought to buy a ticket. It is expected to be somewhere around $500 million!" Personally, I believe the lottery is a tax on people that didn’t do well in math in school, but as she said, "Somebody’s got to win and it might just be us!"

I hadn’t played in so long that I had no idea how to purchase a ticket, but a sweet, young lady showed me the way. I put my $2 into the machine and hit easy pick and the machine coughed up the winning ticket, or so I hoped.

My wife and I were on our way to Newport News that day and so we discussed how we would spend the millions. We even got in a laughable argument over how much each grandkid would get.

It was hard to believe how well our imaginations were working with just thinking about spending our winnings. Oh well, next year when we buy another ticket, we will win for sure! I better call the Lamborghini dealer to insure that he has cars in stock. I am also contemplating buying out Warren Buffett!

Thomas Neiger

Hallieford, Va.