Once there was a Brazilian man who really wanted to be rich. He had this fantasy of becoming rich since he was a naive kid and, so did his father. I guess he and his father was nothing different from the majority of people. He had already tried many different things in an attempt to become rich but, nothing worked.
At the age of forty he had already given up trying. He had no more hopes. Many people believe that someday luck will knock on their doors and they will make it big winning the lottery. This man was too skeptical to have such hopes. His father at the age of 75 was still trying. Brazil is not the land of opportunities.
He was a teacher. Once he was in a classroom and one of his students was able to guess a random question spot on. He then joked saying that this student could win the lottery. As a joke, he asked the boy to write down fifteen numbers. These would be the numbers for a lottery ticket. The boy did it and he slipped the paper into the back pocket of his trousers. Class was over. It was time to call it day.
On the way to his car he found two reais dropped on the street. Was it a sign? He thought. It was the exact price of a bet. He collected the money and kept on thinking about it. He did not believe people could win the lottery. Not in Brazil, at least. He even had a theory to prove no one wins the lottery. The reasoning was very simple. He used to tell everybody: "Let's suppose you know just 100 people. Let's assume that these one hundred people know one hundred more people. This one hundred , in turn, also know one more hundred people. It would amount to one million people in total." Have you ever heard of someone who won the lottery? Or at least a friend of a friend who won the lottery? Probably not."
But this man could not rest his soul this day. And, what if? Irrationality took the best of him. He decided to place the bet. He was not even anxious. He had even forgotten to check the numbers on the day it was announced.
One day later he remembered. He went online and searched for the result. He started checking the numbers. He started shaking, it was rather cold that day. He finished checking the numbers and stayed silent. 1.094.728,95 reais. His wife looked at him and asked what was going on. He stood up, looked at her deep in the eyes. Held her very tight against his body and, with the other hand, crampled the ticket to trash it later.
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