I have never been drawn to the lottery.

Scratch-off tickets are fun for the scratching. I will listen with glistening eyes to your fantasies about buying a villa or a flotilla or a lifetime supply of puddings.

But a billion-dollar jackpot gives me a particular flavor of heebie-jeebies. It’s not the “something for nothing” possibility, although that makes my eyebrow twitch. It’s not the improbability of victory, although it would be more enjoyable to light dollars on fire than to hand them over at 7-Eleven.

It’s that I am really, rebelliously, exasperatingly content.

Don’t get me wrong. The lifetime supply of puddings is appealing, if only because it means pudding price volatility would become irrelevant, and my irrational fears of losing my job would have less teeth if I knew I could always afford the things I’ll need well into my toothless years.

While we’re at it, an unlimited supply of insulin would be welcome. Then again, I think an unlimited supply of insulin should be standard: either your body brews it fresh and fragrant, or you get as many vials as you need to avoid death. This seems an appropriate expectation of a civilized society, although we have yet to hit that jackpot.

But I tell you the truth. If you slipped a billion into my pocket, I would get up tomorrow morning and still write fundraising collateral for the cat sanctuary. I would still clip coupons for Boca burgers. I would stay in my baguette-sized condo, since the cats like it and it only takes one hour to clean.

I would get rid of the stuff as quickly as possible.

How could I bandy about a billion when I’ve already won?

I have no fewer than three pairs of earrings shaped like the moon. My parents are zestful and inexhaustibly patient. My interior jungle is so jumpy with jaguars and thunderstorms, I am never bored. I do not need to carefully check the going rate of riced cauliflower.

I was raised by parents who made it obvious to believe in a loving God. I get to watch Jimmy Fallon every night. I love cats and the elderly and comets and sea lions. No one can stop me from writing every day.

I am a tycoon.

A billion dollars would only slam my already leaden seesaw all the way into the mud.

No, I do not believe in some cosmic calculus where my blessing steals the bread from another plate. I cling to the compassion that adds slices to the pudding pie, mercies that rewrite our mean math.

But my street is easy. My needs are met.

I grapple with a sense of gluttony, a closet of colorful fleece and an ancient acquisitiveness that does not need encouragement.

So if you must ladle loot upon my easy life, I will pour it into Rubbermaids and send them off to feed real needs. They will be minestrone ministers, sloshing grace. I will still be richer than any living creature deserves to be -- or rather, rich like every living creature deserves to be.

If a few macaronis remain, I know how I will use them. Yes, even I have thought about what I’d do with the jackpot.

Here it is.

I want someone to change my sheets and clean up my eyebrows. I am not being cute. I have given this considerable thought.

I have no use for wrestling cotton every Friday, and I have no skill at preventing myself from looking like Fagin in Oliver! I would like someone to conquer my fitteds and flats, and I need someone to laser me ladylike.

(We shall leave aside, for the moment, the twin injustices of unlabeled fitted sheets and female eyebrow expectations.)

These shall be my indulgences. Maybe also the pudding.

Now let’s get to work on universal free insulin and scratching off our grievances.

As Development Director for a cat sanctuary, Angela Townsend bears witness to mercy for all beings. This was not the vocation Angela expected when she got her M.Div. from Princeton Seminary, but love is a wry author. Angela also has a B.A. from Vassar College. She has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 32 years, laughs with her mother every morning, and delights in the moon. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Agape Review, The Amethyst Review, Braided Way, MockingOwl Roost, The Palisades Review, and The Young Ravens Literary Review. Angie loves life dearly.