Wander’s Winning System
Wander Malone considered himself the smartest man in town. Not in the usual sense—he wasn’t much for books, and his job in food service didn’t require complex math—but he knew things. Important things. Like how to win the lottery.
Everyone else? “Idiots,” he muttered, shaking his head as he watched folks buy random numbers. “They don’t have a clue.”
Wander’s “system” had come to him one night after a dream about his childhood dog, Lucky. In the dream, Lucky barked three times, circled twice, and lay down seven times. “Three, two, seven,” Wander whispered to himself, scribbling numbers down. “Lucky numbers.”
The next day, he marched to the convenience store, confident. “You’re wasting your money,” he told an older woman buying a quick pick. She blinked, confused. “You need a system. Like mine.”
“Right,” she said, moving away.
Wander’s method was simple: he believed the universe had patterns, and only he could see them. He wrote down numbers from receipts, license plates, and how many pigeons he saw on the way to work. He’d combine them in what he called his “magic matrix”—a series of crumpled post-its, arrows drawn between them.
“Watch,” he told his coworker,Mike, one afternoon. “These numbers will hit. Everyone else is too dumb to see it.”
Mike raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that, Wander? Odds are pretty random.”
Wander laughed. “Typical thinking. You’ll see.”
That night, Wander watched the lottery draw on TV, feet up, ticket in hand. “Three… seven… twenty-one…”
He nodded, smirking. He got two numbers right, but that wasn’t important. “Closer every time,” he whispered, confident the next draw would be his.
Days turned into weeks. Each loss didn’t shake his faith; it confirmed that others just didn’t understand. He preached his “system” to anyone who would listen, convinced their skepticism was proof of their ignorance.
Then, a big announcement: a local man won the jackpot.
Wander rushed to the lottery office, heart pounding. He was ready to collect his winnings. But when he saw the name on the news—Mike from work—he froze.
Mike laughed when he saw him. “No system, Wander. Just picked my kids’ birthdays.”
Wander blinked, speechless for a moment. Then he scoffed, turning away. “Lucky guess. Doesn’t mean he’s smart.”
And he went back to his numbers, convinced the world was full of fools. Everyone but him.