A dark grey though the sun had not yet set, misting lightly, cold. I parked by the air pump and telephone away from the gas pumps. I walked across to the gas station's mini mart; there was a short line inside.
The cashier handed the man with a trucker's cap some scratch off tickets. He picked up his snack pack and headed out.
The woman waiting ahead of me held tickets that looked lottery related as well. She handed one to the cashier and he scratched of the bottom and punched some numbers in.
"Twenty-five for the scratch-off ticket," he said.
Way to go, I thought to myself. At Christmas, my stocking stuffer scratch-offs only yield one or two bucks, often less than the cost of the ticket, if anything. Ten dollars is my scratch-off best, I think.
The middle-aged woman with the scratch-off winnings then listed off what she wanted, and I thought I misheard her.
"That'll be $35," the cashier said.
I hadn't misheard. She put her entire winnings plus 35 dollars into $20 scratch-off tickets. I didn't even know they had ones that expensive. That's crazy!
I couldn't judge too harshly though because I was there to put five bucks into the mega lottery, in which I had far less chance of winning anything.
A year ago on TTaT: 4:53 by the tracks
I just read a book which explained that terrorism and the lottery control us using the same principle: the human fallacy of thinking that something very unlikely will happen to us. I say: If I'm gonna worry about terrorists, I might as well throw in some pleasant lottery fantasies.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing about the lottery: the odds are so astronomically unfavorable that it's astounding that anyone has ever won. And yet people do win the whole shebang with surprising frequency given the odds. Just takes once. :)
ReplyDeleteFWIW, terrorism has less sway in my mind as I rarely watch TV news.