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.
Comments
That is a smart kid.
Smart kid.
Some 18 or 19 years ago, when my wife and I were first dating, I was basically addicted to the state-lottery scratch tickets ... and I would be ASTOUNDED when I scratched them and found I had NOT won the bazillion-dollar prize. The floor of my car was covered with the duds.
My now-wife would climb in the car, feet atop a pile of losing scratch tickets, and say, "Where are we going out to tonight?" and I'd say "Out? We can't go out. I don't have any money."
How I got her to stick around, I'll never know. But, thankfully, I stopped blowing money on the lottery in years and years ago.
In my defense: Throughout my entire childhood, my mother's family, through example, convinced me that winning the lottery was the key to financial freedom. And if they had instead saved and invested all the money they spent on the lottery, I wouldn't have to work anymore.
Thanks for letting me post an impromptu blog entry in your comments section. I'll stop now.
So did you just drive your then-future-wife around for hours and hours, her feet shuffling lottery tickets around the floor mat? (Tell your wife you're a lucky man.)
Also, feel free to comment at length...takes the pressure off. #FreeContent