Subtitle: I don’t believe in miracles

When I was a small boy my parents took me with them on a day trip to a lake in the Black Forrest. As customary in many touristic places there were lots of souvenir shops along the lake side. We didn’t have much money, so window shopping was what we did most of the time. But this time we came along a small vending machine, just the shape and size of a chewing gum machine. It sold many different things, maybe also chewing gum. Each of us children got a coin and bought something from the vending machine. When I turned the lever a kind of a card ticket drop into the tray. It was a fortune card. I can’t remember much details but there were two numbers on it that were meant to be used in a lottery. Curious as we were we bought a lottery ticket the next week and combined the two numbers from the fortune card with four other numbers as required for the 6 out of 49 lottery.

My conception of the world and the laws that operate it were seriously shaken when the lottery numbers were drawn the next Saturday. The two numbers from the fortune card were right. How could that be? How could the miracle machine have know when to dispose that particular fortune ticket?

Well, we didn’t win much in the lottery. With 3 out of 6 numbers right, we more or less won the money for the lottery ticket back. Months later when we made another trip to that lake in the Black Forest we went to the miracle machine again. But no more fortune cards came out of it.