If Only You Could Eat This Ticket

I’m in a long line at convenience store. I just want to buy a newspaper and a bottle of water. Didn’t realize QuikChek changed its name to SloMoChek as an aspiring elderly Marlboro Man with his three adolescent children is in front of me in the only open register buying lottery tickets.

Visualize Dennis Hopper without a bath, unmatched sandals or Speed Stick. I’m more concerned that he is NOT interrupting my few minutes of life by buying milk, bread or even a Twinkie for his tax write-off dependents.

He is stealing my precious earth’s oxygen by spending his morning and an entire new crisp $100 bill on lottery tickets.

Keep in mind, he wasn’t considering only buying 10 or 20 tickets and spend the rest of necessities. He was animate about using (what it looked like) his monthly salary on pink and white slips of papers with his favorite numbers on them.

“Boxed, straight, match these birth dates, anniversary dates and my third wife’s (accidental) death certificate date”. Someone needs to educate him that there isn’t a number 65 month or a number 45 day on any calendar since 2500 B.C.

I stood behind him (actually a few feet back for safety and sterility purposes), not knowing to laugh at the event or cry as I watched the counter clerk, repeatedly asked him to clarify the numbers for the next 15 minutes. I’m not a big gambler, but if I have a choice of fruit and veggies over the 1,000,000,000 to 1 odds of winning anything but a gift basket with more lottery tickets in it, I think I got that decision down pat.

Can we please have a law against anyone spending more than 5x their life savings under their mattress on anything but food, shelter and HBO?

Isn’t there a 1 800 Don’t be Stupid hotline for those who put their family’s care behind their need to stay up to 10 p.m. and watch a local woman who patterned her dress style on Sex in the City from Season One screaming the number of the white ping pong ball that pops up in front of her. Boy, I’m so much more in awe of Vanna White than I was yesterday.

The saddest fact is that even if he ever wins this life changing score of millions. There is no sign or confidence that any of the winnings would go anywhere other than on the next dog race, horse track or political candidate who wants to legalize body odor as a new energy source.

I did get my paper and my water. I sat in my car, opened the lifestyle section and saw a man from Arkansas who won $10 million yesterday. His biggest revelation, “I can’t wait to get back to WalMart as I have a deep fryer on Lay-a-Way.