I had the horse that came in second.

Holy Guacamole!

The Preakness is here already and I’m still figetizing over The Derby.

I had the horse that came in second.
As the horse who came in first crossed the finish line, I tore my ticket to shreds and threw it in the waste basket.
I could have been a contender!
Today My Horse could have been running for The Triple Crown.

Then the news came over the loudspeaker…The Winning horse was a Junkie.

Hallelujah! My horse that finished second, now finished first…I’m a winner! I’m RICH!

But Wait! I ripped up the ticket. Can you believe that, I ripped up The Winning Ticket! I must find that ticket.

I went to the trash bin, but they had emptied it. I went to the cellar and found hundreds of trash bins, waiting to be dumped into dumpsters. I had to find the right one.

I searched each one individually as fast as I could. It was a dirty job but someone had to do it. Then I remembered they sold hot dogs next to where the bin was. That eliminated all the bins without mustard and ketchup stains.

I searched the others frantically without caring of hot dog paraphernalia. Then I found what I was looking for,
the bin where I had thrown my winning ticket.

I took it home with me, which was hard because I was riding a bus, and people kept throwing stuff in it. I tried to look through it but it was tough. I waited till I got home.

I went into the garage. I remembered thinking why do we have a garage with no car? Well we’ll be able to buy a car as soon as I find the ticket.

I dumped the bin out on the floor. I saw my bits of ticket. There were hundreds more. Apparently others like me had losers and ripped their tickets to shreds. There were ticket parts everywhere.

I had to sort them out. I got my wife to help. She accused me of cheating on her with a girl who smelled like hot dogs.

We separated the ticket pieces in piles. Some of them were different colors. I remembered mine was blue. That was a break.

There were only about a thousand blue pieces.

I remembered I had cried, so we looked for wet ones. That left less.

We worked for three days.
I remembered other things that separated my ticket from the others.
We were finally down to one pile.

We worked for three more days. It was like an intricate jigsaw puzzle.
Finally we had my losing ticket which was now a winner!

We tapped the pieces together. I showed them to my neighbor.
He said the original winner won.

I’m a loser!

My wife agreed.

By George