I guess that this is the point in the story where I am supposed to assure you that we all lived happily ever after. Alas, life isn't that simple.

At times, I thought myself very lucky indeed to have found those tickets. Although I had occasionally found myself cursing them for what they did, I have to admit that it really wasn't the fault of the tickets themselves, but rather my own short-sightedness and immaturity.

But even after finding the tickets, I learned that some of the happiest moments of my life had nothing to do with the tickets at all: serenading Kristen on the first day of school and our overnight trip to Chicago together for my sixteenth birthday are two of them that spring immediately to mind.

There is an old adage that says that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Those tickets represent power, and I've witnessed how despicable that I could become when I allowed myself to use the tickets for the wrong reasons. I've repeatedly made vows to myself never to use those tickets like that anymore, but alas, I am only human, and as much as I'd like to say that I learned my lessons, the temptation of the tickets combined with the frustrations of life sometimes prove too powerful a temptation to resist.

Despite those moments, I have to point out that there are many positive things that came from the tickets: I found friendship, I found love, I've made people happy, and they have made me happy. For the first time, I found myself thinking a little of others rather than just keeping myself in the center of my own universe, and the tickets have made me stop and think of unexpected ramifications of my actions before I do something--these things indicated that I was actually growing up. And I feel it was those "lucky tickets" that were either directly or indirectly responsible for all of these.

Would I have been able to stand up to my mother if I hadn't been emboldened by the tickets? I would like to think that I would, but the truthful answer was that I probably wouldn't--at least, not at the age when I did it.

Sometimes, I wonder what other people would have done if they had found the tickets. Would somebody else have used them in a more mature way than I did at first? Would they end up making the same mistakes? There's no way for me to know for sure.

At other times, I wonder how my life would have turned out if I hadn't found those tickets. Once again, although I have no way of knowing for sure, it's still a matter of fact that of all the people that I held dearest to me on my sixteenth birthday, only my family would have been part of that group if I had never stumbled across those tickets. With all things considered, I guess would have to say that I am grateful for having found them.

So, what lies in store for a sixteen year old boy who seems to have the world in the palm of his hands? That, my friend, is another story... and one that I'll only be too happy to tell--next time!