Playing The Lottery

Have you ever won a sweepstakes, or a large jackpot through the lottery? Yea, me either. Boy I’ve tried though and probably spent a small fortune trying to win a small or preferably large fortune. The most I ever won on a scratch off was $100. Back in the 80s and early 90s I subscribed to a sweepstakes and contests newsletter and entered tons of them for free except for the ton of stamps I needed to mail in my entries because we didn’t have internet back then where you could enter a lot of them for free like you can today; no stamp required. I never won anything from that newsletter. But since the invention of the internet, there are so many you can enter for free, it just requires a little bit of your time. I finally did win a couple things; an apron from Kikkoman soy sauce, a nice throw from Charmin, a bunch of tea from some company, I forget now. They mailed it to me in a box that the mailman crammed into the mailbox so tightly I had to call in the National Guard to help me retrieve it, and it wasn’t even worth it because I don’t even drink tea, so I’m not sure why I won it. A consolation prize, no doubt. These little winnings were fun, but not the bazillions of dollars I was really hoping for.

I used to carry around that piece of paper with your lottery numbers that you played at the local gas station. The cashier runs it through a machine to then give you another piece of paper with your lottery numbers that you carry around like gold nuggets, praying they’re the winning numbers. We’ve probably all gotten behind someone at the gas station turning in their ticket and buying new ones. I sigh and shuffle my feet with impatience so heavily and so loudly while muttering profanities under my breath, as do the people in line behind me, that you can hear us all the way to Canada, where a Canadian convenience store employee is thinking, “There they go again, eh? Those Americans always sighing and shuffling their feet when someone ahead of them is buying a lottery ticket.” But that is what frequently happens when we get behind someone who is turning in their winning scratch offs but then, but then...

To make matters worse, they stand there for an eternity as they try to decide which new scratch offs they want to buy with the $10 they just won, or there’s some glitch with their lottery ticket that requires another cashier or even the manager to resolve. Sigh.

I haven’t played the lottery in years. If you just aren’t winning, you start to realize what a waste of time and money. But, don’t tell me that if I’m sitting at a slot machine in Las Vegas. That’s a story for another time.