Playing the Lottery

Last week the news was all abuzz about the billions of dollars spent on those lottery tickets and the millions of people waiting in line to spend said dollars. I would have been completely unaware of the huge jackpot that caused the frenzy if not for the news coverage, since I can't even remember the last time I bought a lottery ticket. I'm not a lucky winner type of person so I don't even bother with it all.

We were watching the 20/20 special about winning lotteries and how people are inundated with sob story letters and phone calls and relatives that they hadn't seen in decades were now their new best friends. For some people winning the lottery was not such a wonderful thing after all. I did enjoy the part of the story about the young waitress who went right back to work after winning because she loved her job so much, but the part of the story about the young woman that won a million dollars but now can't go anywhere in her town without people asking her for money was just sad. She seemed like she was a little mentally unstable too. Actually very unstable.

So, as we were watching Keith was talking about what he would do with the money if he won, a conversation that was kind of beside the point since we don't buy lottery tickets, but who hasn't fantasized about what they would do with sudden millions?

The first thing we would do would be to leave town so all of those people who want a handout wouldn't be able to find us. Then we'd pay off mortgages and set up trust funds for brothers and sisters and kids and nieces and nephews and everyone. And then we'd get the biggest fanciest motor home, maybe with a special cat motor home trailer, and take to the highways and travel the country.

But since we never buy lottery tickets we'll just keep on dreaming.

There was a  winner in Bakersfield last weekend though, not in the big super lottery thing but in the state lottery, and she won 17 million dollars.

So maybe we should spend that dollar or however much a ticket costs these days and take our chances.