1 in 195,249,054.  The odds of winning Powerball.

That’s why I’m back at work today.

The last few weeks some News-2 employees have each contributed $2 to a Powerball pool for the Wednesday and Friday drawings.  It’s grown from a handful of people to close to 40.  We had more than 70 tickets in play. 

No dice.

But a cool thing is happening with every ticket ripped into confetti.

What I have noticed when the collection envelope is passed around is I’m reconnecting with colleagues in our two-story building.  People who I haven’t talked to in months are suddenly back on my radar, and I’m back on theirs.  It’s not that we don’t like each other but if don’t make a conscience effort to have paths cross, they don’t.  Because of this silly twice-weekly ritual of forking over a couple of bucks to keep microscopic dreams of fortune alive, there’s cameraderie I haven’t seen here in awhile.  There has been a time or two I haven’t been around for the collection and someone covered for me and I’ve done the same for others.  Our “honor system” is a tattered envelope with the money stuff in it with names scratched down on the back of it.

And heck, it’s just four-dollars a week (hey… that’s 20-bucks a month… 240-dollars a year??!!).

(And let me stop right here by stating, this isn’t an entry promoting the lottery.  It’s simply about a life experience.)

So each person’s cut would have been just more than $7,000,000 before taxes.  Would I buy a ticket by myself for a $7-Million dollar jackpot?  No way!  Isn’t it funny that I wouldn’t bother with that but I love being part of a group that would have had the same payoff?

So our growing group hasn’t won yet.

In a small way, I feel like I already have.

Oh, the winning ticket came from a store in Ft. Jackson, South Carolina near the nation’s largest Army base.  Sure hope a soldier or soldier’s family won it.