My mom and I spent the last couple of weeks making trips on the weekends to the border towns of Evanston and Woodruff in Wyoming and Idaho, respectively, buying up lottery tickets, hoping to play our luck – adult edition.

Playing the lottery is fun but it costs money, quite a bit of it, plus the cost of gas for those 140 miles round trip when gas is still over $3 per gallon. Not cheap.

The last couple of weeks have been disappointed to say the least. I couldn’t even get the special numbers correct and I usually do. I don’t think I’m the only one though. There’s been a dry spell lately and the winning amount has swollen to an amount that would make anyone’s eyes bulge. So, as if I have nothing better to do, I came up with this crazy idea on how I can guarantee at least one correct number.

My crazy idea is to buy one lottery play for each special number. The other numbers can be computer generated. That way, it’s a guaranteed win for one of the tickets because the special number for one of the tickets has to be correct and that’s the minimum requirement to win.

To be honest, I don’t think my idea is that crazy. I believe there are crazier ideas out there.

I recently heard an episode of a history podcast about a guy generating a list of every number combination and recruited people to buy lottery tickets to fulfill his crazy plan. Well, with the colossal of tickets he had to buy, finding the winning ticket became an endeavor because he had to locate it in his pile of tickets.

Anyway, when I told my mom of my crazy idea, I thought she was going to laugh and call me silly. Instead, she said, “let’s go.”

Holy cow! My mom was actually going with my idea? I couldn’t believe it, not even when I was parking the car at the first gas station after crossing into Idaho. My crazy idea was coming to realization.

Well, numbers picked, tickets bought, now we wait.