The Winning Ticket

For the past 2 weeks Ant has been saying that he wants to go to Safeway and use his money. Whenever I asked what he wanted to buy he would say a "blue one shot." When I asked him what that was he would just smile and laugh.  That is what living with Ant is like. He doesn't know how to describe things.  He has a name or label for things and that is about it.

So I figured a blue one shot was some kind of candy. Whenever we would go into Safeway he would get upset that he forgot to bring his money.  I would say show me what you want and I will buy it for you and he would say "no, I have to use MY money," and he refused to show me what it was that he wanted.

Today I took Ant to a couple of estate sales and I told him to take his money in case he saw something he wanted to buy. On the way home, we stopped at Safeway and he was so excited because he finally had his money with him. Ant danced and skipped around the store waving his $5 in the air.  I kept asking him what he wanted to buy and he just kept repeating a "blue one shot."  When I asked "where is it?"  His reply was "there," but he wouldn't point at anything.  When I asked, "where there?" he would just start to laugh and skip off waving his $5.

We finally got in-line to pay for our groceries and Ant exclaimed "my blue one shot!"  I asked him where and he points to the lottery vending machine at the end of the checkout aisle and sure enough, right there on the machine was a big button all lit up that said "ONE SHOT."

The vending machine was filled with about a 15 different kinds of lottery scratcher tickets, but there was one for $5 and it was blue. Ant put his $5 into the machine and pushed the big one shot button and then pushed the button for the blue scratcher.  The machine spit out a big blue ticket into the receptacle and Ant put his hand in and grabbed the ticket and yelled "I won!" He skipped the entire way to the car waving his blue ticket it in the air.  When we got to the car I asked him what he won and he said "money." 

We have since returned home and Ant has no interest in scratching off the ticket to see if he actually did win.  He thinks that just because the machine gave him the ticket means he won. I asked Ant what he wants to do with his money and he said buy stuffed animals. 

So here I sit at the kitchen table, staring at this scratcher wondering if he knows something that we don't? Is this a winning ticket? Or maybe we are all winners regardless if the ticket is a money winner because just the fact that we even got a ticket means we already won. I guess we will have to wait until Ant wants to scratch it to see if we won any money, however, even if it isn't a money winner I will tell him that he won $20 and take him to CVS so he can buy stuffed animals because I sure won when God gave him to me!