They Won The Lottery- Then Their Friends and Family Turned On Them

Years ago, my good friend Missy won the lottery. Well, at least her dad did. We were in elementary school and he was a lottery addict. He probably had a full-on gambling problem.

In one of those one-in-a-million chances, it worked out for him. He won $5 million in the NY State lottery. Before this, Missy and her family had lived in a small shotgun house on the edge of the woods. They didn’t have much, kind of like my family. Her dad worked hard though and his only vice seemed to be his gambling addiction.

Missy’s mom Sara worked at the local grocery store and tried her best to keep up with the other neighborhood moms. This was the 80s and unfortunately for her, she wore the 1970s fashions because she couldn’t afford the Lycra neon color clothing. The other moms could tell that Sara couldn’t keep up.

Unfortunately, this spilled over to Missy. When Missy was in 1st and 2nd grade, she was one of the popular kids. But as status and labels became more important, the other kids noticed Missy did not have cool clothes. They also knew where she lived and decided she was poor.

Now these were kids whose parents only made marginally more than Missy’s family. They really had no right to judge her like that. But kids are cruel and they decided she was going to play the…