If I won the lottery

What quirky little things would you do?

Pat and I were discussing the lottery. We don’t usually buy lottery tickets, but the Powerball jackpot has been getting big, and when the number gets big, we sometimes make a small contribution or two to the state education and scholarship funds on the extremely unlikely chance that we might cash in big-time.

If we won the big jackpot, we’d do what most people envision – after paying off debts, get a nice home (or two), nice cars, and that sort of thing. We’d also have money to spend on boats, and I’d see a new, finely tuned Etchells on the horizon, along with semi-professional crew (and a stipend for Zorro to continue as my coach).

Then there would also be the altruistic side of things. The schools in the Chama Valley are so woefully underfunded that there is nearly no art instruction; we’d set up an endowment to provide for the arts (both visual and performing) to be provided at all levels, from elementary on up. We might even endow a Chama Valley Cultural Center, which would provide performance, studio, and gallery space. We might also make a low-interest or no-interest loan so the Chama Valley Supermarket could rebuild and reopen, rather than waiting for FEMA to provide the funds.

But then there are the really quirky ideas. As Pat and I were discussing these fantasies, I was rubbing great gobs of moisturizing lotion into my severely parched hands, so chapped that they were bleeding. At the community college where I teach, washing one’s hands after going to the restroom is a painful business – either the hand soap or the paper towels (or both) are unbelievably harsh. The soap seems nice enough, but those paper towels are super-harsh, and I’m guessing they’re fairly acidic.

My quirky idea, if I win the lottery: provide the college with an endowment specifically for the purchase of higher quality consumables in the restrooms – moisturizing soap and acid-free paper towels, and probably air-blower hand dryers too. Yeah, it’s not an earth-shaking project, but it would make a lot of people happier in a small sort of way.

So, if you were to win the lottery or otherwise come into a large pile of unexpected money, what would you do with it – not the big lifestyle stuff or the major charity stuff that pretty much everybody thinks about, but the little pet peeve that you would solve, or the quirky silly thing that you would use the money for?