What Would You Do?
My chances of winning the lottery are precisely null, because I never buy a ticket. Well, that’s not true; sometimes, when the PowerBall reaches over $10 million I suddenly develop this ‘feeling’ that I’m going to win and I head to the nearest store.
Normally I scoff at the idea of ‘feeling’ something’s going to happen, but I blame marketing. The lotteries people start pushing the “PowerBall’s reached $10 million!” hysteria, urging me to buy the $10 winning ticket and reap my rewards today despite the 1-in-14-million odds or whatever they are.
They also harp on about how I can take my (imaginary) kids to Disneyland. That seems to be the #1 fantasy. You never hear the actors dreaming of boosting their Super, dabbling in the market, paying off their hefty mortgage, sending their kids to Eton or bumping up their contribution to the homeless animals.
So I buy a ticket on the odd Saturday, feeling slightly foolish but still justified because it could well be my time to win. It isn’t. Within five minutes my numbered scrap of paper (“and the lucky PowerBall number is… not on your ticket!”) has become a scrap of paper.
When I give it more thought, though, I don’t mind never winning the lottery. I don’t really want for anything. I don’t have a family to feed, I’m not working five jobs to pay the bills and I don’t dream of Disneyland because I’ve been – well, to EuroDisney which is more or less the same – and the queues were eternal.
Do you buy lottery tickets? What would you change in your life if you won?
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 9:59 am
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