I have a problem.
Actually, I have a lot of problems, but let’s try to narrow the field a bit.
I have a gambling problem. It’s minuscule, really. Tiny. Hardly worth mentioning were it not for the fact that I break out in a cold sweat every time I pass a lotto machine, or the lottery counter at the grocery store or at the gas station, or at any of the hundreds of other places where lottery tickets are apparently sold.
I haven’t seen them at the library yet, but give it time.
You’ve heard of “Aha!” moments? Well, there are also “Oh, shit!” moments. One usually experiences the latter when one is being mugged or falling off a cliff or saying “I do” to someone when it’s really more of a “Do I, though?”
I experienced my “Oh, shit!” moment at the drug store of all places. Nary a cliff or imminent spouse in sight.
There was, however, a man dressed in a style somewhere between “casual” and “homeless”, frantically scratching at a ticket in the store’s entryway where the lotto machine hunches like a glimmering troll.
He had this…thing…in his hand. I don’t know what to call it. Some kind of specialized tool for scratching the silver stuff off of a lotto ticket. A scratcher for scratchers. (I’ve since discovered that you can watch people scratch off lottery tickets in real time on TikTok, because of course you can.)
The problem is that I didn’t just glance at him as I walked by. The problem is that I thought, “Where can I get one of those scratcher things?”
I then headed towards the back of the store to the courtesy counter. I had decided, after much gathering of my courage, to ask whether they could cash my little stash of $2 winning tickets.
I had $8 total and it was burning a hole in my psyche. As it turns out, why, yes, yes they COULD cash my tickets. While awaiting this bounty, I fell into a brief conversation with a fellow gambler (it seems insane to use that word, but there it is), and let’s just say he had that same sheen of unwashed desperation as the guy out front.
“I am not like them,” I tried to tell myself, my pulse accelerating. “I am not desperate. I’m having FUN playing the lottery. THIS IS FUN.”
I folded up my winnings and headed out of the store, reminding myself to cash my next winning tickets someplace else so that the people behind the counter wouldn’t add me to their mental list of “regulars.”
I felt the gravitational pull of the machine as I left. I felt it physically. I felt what can only be called a craving to stop and sacrifice those $8 winnings to this weird, ugly silver god.
Like I said, I have a problem.
It started (like most problems do) without fanfare. I had won the lottery before, but only because my boss bought me scratch-offs for my birthday one year. I won almost $200! OMG!
I went to Vegas, again on someone else’s dime, found myself $1,000 in the black, and promptly lost it all to a one-armed bandit (which, frankly, doesn’t seem like much of a bandit. I could totally take a mugger with only one arm).
And then one day I decided that, goddamn it, I’m an adult, and if I want to throw my hard-earned money away on scratch-off lottery tickets, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
I can eat all the donuts I want, I can buy myself a birthday cake when it’s not even my birthday, and I can give my money to the State of Ohio Lottery Commission and get, almost assuredly, absolutely nothing in return, if that’s what I want to do.
BUT (and it’s a big “but”) I might also win enough to pay off my house, to give myself some small security, to quash the fear and anxiety that haunt my every waking minute.
Or I might just win $100. I could really use $100. That seems doable — people probably win $100 all the time, right?
And then I made the mistake of researching “How To Win The Lottery”, because that’s what I do.
If chaos theory has taught us anything, it’s that everything has a system. There is always a way to tweak the odds. And in the case of scratch-off lottery tickets, that tweak is to buy in bulk. Buying just one scratch-off ticket is a fool’s game. But buying, say, 20? Well, mama didn’t raise no fool.
(We had a case recently where the ex had drawers, DRAWERS full of scratch-off lottery tickets. Thousands of them. He also abused steroids, had rage issues, and dropped dead of a heart attack before the case was over.)
Anyway.
I went from buying one ticket for $1 each to buying 10 tickets for $2 each. I also tried four of the $5 tickets, but that’s for the rich folks, and also I just didn’t take a shine to those particular tickets.
I bought a few $20 tickets and quickly learned my lesson. I’m no Kardashian.
I have my favorites, the ones that “feel” lucky, the ones that “give you more chances of winning” (say, 1:10,256 versus 1:174,352). I like the ones with the smiling sun on them because they’re red and yellow and cheerful, and since I’ve always collected anthropomorphic sun items (T-shirts, pillows, wall hangings, etc.), that seems like A SIGN, all caps, that I should buy those particular tickets.
I went from spending $1 a week, to $5, to $10, to $20, to $40.
All in the space of a month.
It’s not really the money that is worrying. I’m not spending my non-existent kids’ college funds. I’m not spending the rent money. I blow $20 a week on Starbucks.
But I feel dirty. I feel wrong. I don’t like the scheming and plotting that seem necessary to maintain my sense of normalcy, to distance myself from this new set of behaviors. Go to a certain gas station, but not this time, you were just there. Go to the grocery store, but only sometimes, because you have to face the lady behind the counter in the checkout when you shop. Don’t ask the 7-Eleven clerk the questions that the other losers ask — has anyone hit big on this ticket yet? What do you know? TELL ME YOUR SECRETS!
I don’t want to be one of “those people”, snatching the ticket from the clerk’s hand and scratching at it like a crazed lemur right there in the store.
I have a Master’s Degree. I use big words to annoy people. I work in the legal field. I am better, I am smarter. I am throwing my money away, but ironically.
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away, my first husband worked at a gas station. When I visited him, I stood before his counter in a tiny silver dune. “What’s that?” I asked, gesturing towards the floor, baffled.
He pointed at the rolls of lottery tickets behind him. “People buy them, stand here and scratch them off, and then buy more.” Tens of people every day, hundreds in a month. Who knew how many in a year? All scared. All desperate.
I saw a couple at the drug store today. They didn’t look like the type of people who played ironically. They looked like the type who were playing their rent money.
I keep a running tally of my gains and losses on a piece of paper in my kitchen. In this way, I pretend that I have control. When I hit some magic negative number, I will stop.
What is that magic number, you ask?
Hopefully, I’ll know it when I see it.
I had my own addiction, but not scratch-offs. That’s chump change. Go for the PowerBall, Mega Millions, LottaBucks, or whatever your particular state is hawking. Buy a ticket every week, because if I hit it’s easy street all the way! Being a math major I knew enough statistics to realize that buying multiple tickets would not change the odds in my favor by any meaningful amount. I also knew that letting the machine pick my numbers was as good or better than using my dog’s birthday, my birthday, or the back of a fortune cookie to pick. Eventually logic prevailed as I realized that the old saying is so true - the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. I also realized that it's just one more way for the elite 1% to keep us in the 99% down at serf status while they sleep on a bed of money.
I was shaken to my core around 1994 when my uncle, a drunk and a high school dropout, though nonetheless a decent guy, showed me a roll of 10,000 losing lottery tickets. $10,000. He told me he could've bought a new car if he'd just had more discipline. Almost 30 years later I've never played the lottery.