My son was in high school. He and a group of friends were going through a phase making movies. He wrote a film about what happens to the relationships of a group of kids between when they win the lottery and when they can cash their ticket after the weekend. It was a comedy and eight of his pals were involved.

About a year later one of them got a feeling out of nowhere that he should get a lottery ticket. He had never bought one in his life. He decided to play the number from the film but didn't know how to do it. As he asked the clerk what to do, his girlfriend scoffed at him and said, "You're not going to win." He got flustered and asked the clerk to just give him a random ticket.

A week later the whole crew was sitting in my kitchen eating cereal, which was a tradition, and all were commiserating about what they would have done if he had played the film's numbers - which won. The friend said that he would have taken them all to Hawaii among other things. There was a lot of moaning and groaning.

Looking back, maybe it was for the best. The ticket buyer married his girlfriend and they seem very happy together. And my son has written over twenty television episodes for five different shows.