24 & 49.

I came so close to being a mega-millionnaire that it isn’t even funny.
For this reason [that it isn’t even funny] I forbid any snickering and/or laughter during the serious telling of the following vignette....
Picture this.
After an incredibly arduous day at work I stop off at the local supermarket to pick up a few chicken legs and maybe a potato or two, along with some sort of carcinogenic microwaveable item that I will take to work with me for tomorrow’s lunch.
After going through the checkout, I am making my way out of the store when I pass the Lottery booth and I recall that I have an unchecked ticket from the recent draw. Some people play the Lottery for fun. For me, however, that weekly ticket tucked into my wallet is something I think of quite seriously as being “My Retirement Plan.”
So, imagine my horror at the following sequence of events.
I set down the meagre bag of peasant victuals and root around for the ticket.... ahh, there it is. I hold it up against the display which shows the winning numbers, which happen to be:
12 – 14 – 16 – 23 – 24 – 45.
I’m not good with math and/or numbers in general at the best of times... things algebraic are just not my forte, but it’s amazing how rapidly I developed the numerical exactitude of a nuclear physicist as my eyes kept darting from this display to the ticket in my shaking hand... my ticket which held the numbers:
12 – 14 – 16 – 23 – 45 – 49.
For those of you keeping score, this means that I am ONE NUMBER off from winning $10,000,000. Ten million dollars.
A thousand dollars.... ten thousand times.
A million dollars, not once.... but hell.... TEN times, and all at once.
Be still my peasant heart!
I turn to the girl behind the till.... “What does this mean? I must have won something.... does this look right to you?”
I hand her the ticket and she inserts it into this machine and while these garbled sounds come out of it I am praying fervently to all manner of quickly imagined monetary deities.... I called upon Freedomethius... QuitWorkius... Trumpalopimus... all of them, and then she handed me back the ticket.
“You win $2,038.30 sir.”
Ooooooh.... ow owww! Ye gods are cruel and unkind unto me!
NOT quite enough to retire on! Nope. It will be back to work for me in the morning, with my Stouffer’s microwaveable thing here.....

When I bought that ticket, I shaded off the numbers in the squares myself. It was not one of those computer generated tickets. If I had just shaded in the number 24 instead of so stupidly STUPIDLY shading in that number 49, I would have won ten mil....
...It is probably time for me to quit turning this over in my mind. Thanks for listening though. It was very cathartic for me to just once more get this out in the open, and thereby, bury it for good.
Suffice it to say, tomorrow morning, you can be 100% sure of where I will be.
I will be driving to work, WAY too early, and then, at about 1:15, I’ll be hearing that familiar “beep-beep-beep” which is Panasonic’s way of reminding me “Dinner is now served, Mr. Lottery Loser!”
Da Vinci Code Da SHMINCI Code! I still want to crack the Lottery Code!