So I didn’t win the lottery, again. It happens all the time and it’s probably because I never play the lottery and also...because...well....it’s the lottery. No one wins, ever. Except the winner. And how happy for those lottery winners, are we?
One of the grocery store chains here in our town occasionally runs store sponsored scratch-off games. Buy a specific brand of cottage cheese or a minimum amount of groceries and the check-out person presses a thin stack of ‘tickets’ into your hand, along with the grocery receipt.
There’s usually a small pile of those unscratched tickets laying next to my car keys by our front door. Once in a while when I need a non-Internet distraction, I’ll find a quarter and scratch the silver film off the cards to see what I haven’t won.
On Saturday night, I plunked the stack of scratch-off tickets onto the coffee table, gave each of the girls a quarter and showed them how to play a grocery store scratch-off game. (It’s all about education, people.) After we’d scratched off all the losing tickets we piled them into the center of the coffee table and then sat back looking over our heap of failure. After a moment or two, Heidi stood up and walked around the table, collected everyone’s quarters and then headed for her room.
I sat there for another moment and then realized I’d just been pick-pocketed while playing a fixed, carnival game.
