Lottery Players

I filled my car’s gas tank recently, and when I went in to get my change from the cashier, there was a man in front of me buying lottery tickets. He spent at least five minutes buying several different kinds of tickets and scratching off the film to reveal the numbers underneath. I guess these are tickets they call scratchers.

There are other tickets where you have to recite numbers and the clerk inputs them and prints out a ticket. Those tickets must be the ones that you try to match to numbers that are broadcast every night on television. Reciting the numbers was a lengthy process too.

The man took his sweet time transacting the purchase, and he left with (I swear) a scowl on his face. I guess he didn’t win anything for all his money.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve been stuck behind a slowpoke playing the lottery, and there have been times when I’ve had to wait in a line of them waiting for them to finish in order to pay for my purchase or get my change. I just hate that.

I have to admit that I have very little knowledge of how all the games in the lottery are played, but I see the signboards and the ads on TV that promote it and tell how many millions of dollars are currently available to win. I also sometimes watch the idiots in their tuxedos reading off the numbers as they appear in front of me on the television screen, as though I can’t read them for myself.

What I do know about the lottery is that it is a total scam, and the chances of winning are about 1-in-100 million, but even that is probably a low figure. It could be 1-in-200 million, or 1-in-a-billion. The point I’m trying to make is that the real chances of winning are astronomical.

It doesn’t increase your chances to buy 5 or 10 or even 100 lottery tickets. That just makes you a bigger sucker.

There is another aspect to the lottery that I hate. The majority of people who play it are poor, elderly, minorities, or a combination of all three. I have no proof, but I’ve heard radio talk show hosts say that there is actually a concerted effort to target the poor and the elderly for lottery tickets.

Of course there are some players who are well off, or young, and many are Caucasian. I know some of them, and when asked they tell you that they play for the fun of it and they enjoy the gamble that they might strike it rich, even against all the odds. Well, that’s okay if they want to waste a few spare bucks for the thrill of it. I usually jokingly thank them for paying taxes for me.

Okay, let’s suppose that someone actually does win that big jackpot, several million large. What happens then? There have been studies done on jackpot winners, and the news isn’t good. Most go on a spree. Then they try to help friends and family—boy, do they learn of new friends and relatives fast. The studies usually find that within two years of the windfall, the winner is worse off socially and financially than they were before they won. Some have gone bankrupt, and others have committed suicide.

Unless a person is already an investor and has a good financial plan, most do not know how to handle a big settlement. Those are not the kind of people who would ever play the lottery in the first place, either. So very few lottery winners have a better life from their good fortune. It only adds to their misery.

I don’t know why, given the track record of lottery winners, anyone wants to play that stupid game in the hope of winning. And I certainly wish they would quit tying up the lines at every gas station from here to Timbuktu.