WINNER WINNER HOT DOG DINNER

I Won the Mega Millions Jackpot

I’m exploding pans in the microwave because I can afford new ones

I don’t play the lotto or lottery. I don’t know the difference between the two. My dad did. He thought he’d win. Or he pretended he thought he’d win. He was a magical thinker.

I thought he’d win too. He’s been dead for decades and I still think he’ll win. Dad used to tell me about the man who would show up at your door and give you a million dollars.

This was in the 1970s or maybe the 1960s. It doesn’t matter. The man with the millions is long dead. Dad described him as old in the 70s.

Why is he giving people a million dollars? I asked dad.

He has it and he wants to share, said dad — like he knew the man, but the man was as mysterious as D.B. Cooper.

In case you missed who D.B Cooper was — in 1971 he bought a plane ticket on the Northwest Orient. He handed the flight attendant a note that said he had a bomb.

He exhibited a bombish-looking mechanism in a briefcase and demanded 200,000(1.2 million by today's standards) and four parachutes(20 parachutes by today's standards). When the plane landed he had disappeared. D.B. was what dreams were made of.

Dad loved D.B Cooper as much as he loved the million-dollar man. Not the tv show but dad loved that too. D.B Cooper and the random millionaire occupied the same place in dad’s grey matter — the location where magical thinking is cultivated.

Dad was sure the random millionaire would stop at our door in Miller Beach, Indiana. Miller Beach is near glamorous Gary, Indiana. There are rippling banner flag signs throughout Miller Beach that read Miller Beach, Where the dunes begin — nice rebranding for a beach town on the outskirts of a dilapidated steel mill.

There was ample sun outside the front door of that house. You should have seen dad’s tomatoes. They were as gigantic as sunflowers dosed with growth hormones. We had sunflowers too. They leaned against our aluminum-sided house like sagging oak trees.

Can you imagine a sunflower so big it knocks over a house? I can. If one of those things got stuck by lightning, our house was coming down. Dad painted a picture of one of those sunflowers. He had to rope together seven separate canvases to demonstrate their size.

Dad and I are magical thinkers. That’s why he stopped drinking when I was young and I stopped drinking when I was in my early twenties. Magical thinkers should stick to growing giant sunflowers.

If something feels real, dad and I thought we could hope it into existence. I was sure the million-dollar man was going to walk past dad’s tomatoes and bending oak tree sunflowers and give us our winnings. Why not us?

The door dad would open when the man arrived led to our kitchen. I once tried to heat up mac’n’cheese in a thick stainless pan in the microwave in that kitchen. It exploded.

I also used to heat up daily hotdogs in there too. Clear, time, 1:00, cook control, start. I made so many hotdogs in that microwave clear, time, 1:00, cook, control, start is a permanent fixture in my hall of memories.

I could have died when I exploded that microwave. Instead, I remember the smell of metallic smoke. Dad walked into the kitchen and looked at me after the explosion. “You’re a strange one, Amy.”

My son thinks we’re going to win the billion-dollar lotto or lottery.

It’s called the mega millions, mom, my son corrected me. Not sure why it matters, but okay.

Why not us? He said to me. What do you think our chances our? My son persisted.

1%? I answered.

He laughed. Mom. 1% would be amazing. We have a better chance of being born than winning the lotto.

What are our chances of being born? I asked.

One in four hundred trillion, he said.

My dad woulda loved this kid. This kid of mine would have inspired a whole new series of paintings if dad lived to know him.

What are you gonna do if you win? I asked.

I’m gonna give a lot of it away, but it will be hard to figure out who my friends are — so I can’t make any new friends because who could I really trust? It’s like jumping out of an airplane. You don’t assume your parachute works. You have to plan what you’ll do if it doesn’t work.

I thought about E.B. Cooper. I wondered if his parachute worked.

Can we get another dog if we become billionaires? My son asked.

Sure, I said. Maybe.

I laughed at my maybe. Why was I maybeing this kid? Did I really think we’d win? Was I a bummer or an optimist?

C’mon mom. We could totally afford dog walkers.

The money was spoiling him already. Dogwalkers? What? We get rich, we can’t even walk our own dog? Then I thought, maybe we could get a house just for the dog walkers, so they could have their space and we could have our space. I didn’t need to become best friends with my dog walkers.

It’s not always the best thing to win the lottery, I said.

Why mom?

Because if you’re a billionaire, you might turn out to be an asshole. We all might.

I thought about the vacations we could take. I imagined on one of those vacations, we’d get cocky. We’d board a small airplane to fly to a remote billionaire-person island and crash. We’d blow up like that mac’n’cheese in the microwave on Miller Beach.

My dad would greet us in heaven and say, “You won the lottery, kid. Told you.”

Wouldn’t you rather be thinking? Follow Contemplate and Amy Sea