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What would you do if you won a billion dollars? Or even just a paltry $220 million? How much of your life would change? More importantly, would it be for the better?

I think about this a lot. What if I ever do win the lottery? I'll buy a giant house, a huge truck, and perhaps even some indentured servants.

I might even collect strange things like the suspenders Herbert Hoover was wearing when he fell down the stairs in the White House, or a stuffed giant squid, or even the rubber underpants Courtney Love wore during her first trip to rehab.

But the first thing on the really extravagant list would be a surplus Department of Defense atomic cannon.

Sonny and I wouldn't be a nuclear power. Plutonium is hard to come by even for super rich people. Instead we would use the cannon in a responsible manner. We would protect the Tavaputs Ranch herd on its winter range by using the cannon to shoot coyotes in Grand County. From my house in Herriman.

This would almost certainly annoy the neighbors (not to mention the people in Grand County), but so what? I'd be rich. I wouldn't have to care. And on the off chance I did, I could shut them up with a bag of money.

I would definitely give a bunch of cash to Sonny. If there's one thing I know about being rich, it's that rich people like to hang out with other rich people. Nothing spoils fun like somebody complaining about how much it costs.

None of this matters because I never actually play the lottery This means I stand only a slightly smaller chance of winning than people who do play.

People like to think that money wouldn't change them, that they would still be the same old Ralph and Emma Lou they were before landing in a pile of money the size of a landfill.

Not me. I know that a lot of money would make me a lot of bad. Vast wealth is like drugs — people who can't control themselves should never be allowed any more of it than is necessary to keep them alive.

Again, all of this speculation is pointless because not only do I not play the lottery, my wife wouldn't let me have the money if I did win. It would go into savings, where it would be doled out to me only after strenuous pleading and a background check.

My wife is not a stingy control freak. She suffers from a far more serious malady — she's married to me.

It's been 40 years but I still remember her response when she first discovered that I didn't have a savings or checking account, but rather cashed my paychecks and kept the money under the front seat of my car. She burst into tears.

"Oh, my gosh, you're not interesting. You're just stupid."

So I asked my wife what she would do with a billion dollars if I won it. I couldn't believe what I heard.

The money would be invested wisely and conservatively. Some of it would pay off the houses of our children, and some put into college trust funds for our grandchildren.

A lot of it would go to previously agreed upon charities, none of which are "Sonny & Kirby's Rodent Control for the Explosively Challenged."

Finally, I would receive a one-time, up-front cash lump sum of $500. After that I would have to submit requests for additional funds through a team of accountants she hired to make sure we still had a few dollars left at the end of the year.

Becoming suddenly rich sounds fun. It probably is. But staying rich sounds boring.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.