Friday, June 19 was at best an eventful day for Oliver Franks. Early in the morning he learned he had won the million-dollar jackpot in the Virginia lottery. Having played the numbers for the entirety of his adult life, Franks was thrilled that his diligence finally paid off. After immediately putting a Chevrolet Corvette on hold for himself, he called his family and close friends with the good news.
However, things soon took an interesting turn. While on the phone gloating to an ex-girlfriend, Franks began opening the rest of his mail and discovered a summons to appear in court for unpaid parking tickets. The notice was marked “urgent” and “pay or die.” Franks thought nothing of it, a millionaire now with cash to spare on his traffic bill. Wanting to get it taken care of quickly so he could proceed with his sports car purchase and irrational, celebratory impulse buying, he went to the local court building the very next morning.
One can only imagine his shock when the court’s cashier, looking shaken, refused to tell him aloud the balance he had accrued in unpaid parking tickets. She led him to a back room and wrote the number on a blank piece of paper that she burned to ashes and then ate once he had seen and comprehended its contents. Alarming contents that indicated Franks’ lottery winnings would not be nearly sufficient to cover his traffic debt. In response, Franks’ immediately went home and slept for a distressing 85 hours, because he knew he’d be “working at hyper-speed for the rest of his life and after.”
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