Death and Numbers

As I state from time to time in one short story or another, the Thais believe very strongly that if you dream of numbers and death, you have seen a winning lottery number.

I had such a dream last night, so I will share it with all of you. The Thai lottery comes out on April 16, so you can all run out and buy tickets. I only ask that if my prediction makes you rich, that you'll write a small check to the Bangkok Opera as a gesture of thanks.

In my dream, I am a poor street kid who runs in a gang. We are in a huge urban sprawl and there is a beautiful tall building we are trying to reach. But we must run past a broken fence with a lottery vendor. You must have a lottery ticket to get into the building and the price of each ticket varies. It is a crazy lottery system because it not only has numbers ... you must also answer questions. In my dream there is a girl with me, a close friend, I can't tell who it is upon waking, and some other gang members.

To get the first lottery ticket I have to answer the question, "How many skulls are there in the bible?" and unthinkingly, I answer "3." I see three skulls in front of me in a sort of vision.

I am told "That is only partially true. There are actually 41." (maybe this is a numerological reference to 4 minus 1.)

However, I am allowed to have the lottery ticket anyway. I am told that I will receive $101.50. I am delighted. But the woman who is with me (now I am almost convinced that this was Judy, the late mother of my son John) really wants to get into the building.

I say, "All right, I will sacrifice this ticket and buy another with the money I have won."

Everyone starts to move to the building, praising my sacrifice, and I turn to buy another ticket. But now I have to pay 440. I am racking my brains thinking of how I will raise this ... when I wake up.

This is a classic Thai lottery dream with all the correct elements: skulls, numbers, and so on. So, I thought about it and said to myself, "Okay, if I actually see these numbers on the street, I better go ahead a buy."

Fool that I am, I could only find the number 801531, which contains all the digits in my dream except 44 ... but would 8 do as an analogue for 44? All I know is that I will win 20 million baht if this is the winning number.

If any of you can solve this mystery, buy a lottery ticket, and actually win based on my dream, all I ask is that you pay me the dream-tax. It will all go to the opera anyway.