I didn't win the Lotto. I'll never win the Lotto. This much is clear.
I'll never be that rich, multimillionaire rich, don't-care-what-it-costs rich. Won't happen. This too is clear.
State lotteries are often called a tax on the stupid, and in some ways that might be true- we need not explicitly enumerate the chances of winning, because everyone knows what they are.
50-50. You win or you don't.
Everybody who plays the lotto, or Powerball or MegaMillions or Loto 649 or the football pools or the casinos, knows that the real mathematical odds are long. They also reason that someone's gotta win it. And that's true, as long as you're a retired teacher or one of 357 factory workers who pitched in a buck apiece for the office lottery pool or a recently documented worker with several leech-like relatives who crowd into the official Winner's Photo Op smiling and spending the money in their own minds. If you're none of the above, you are not going to win.
I'm none of the above.
This doesn't prevent me from throwing a few bucks into the toilet of the California Super Lotto, doing the simple calculation of what I'd get if I won- cash value minus taxes, not too shabby- and what I'd do with it. Oh, what I'd do with it. I'll tell you what I'd do with it- I'd tell the entire freakin' world to go to hell. I'd retire. I'd travel, I'd build a second house in the desert, another in the Keys. I'd buy the best car... no, I'd hire a limo. And I'd put a lot of it in tax-free bonds and live off the interest, spending primarily on sumptuous meals and spa treatments. I'd be there reclining on the chaise longue with a cold one in my hand, and I'd turn and look at Fran and she'd be there with her own cocktail and we'd grin broadly at each other and we'd think, yes, yes indeed, we've made it.
Won't happen. Nice dream, but it won't.
It happens to other people. It happens to people like Ben Affleck, who appears to have virtually no acting talent or charisma but has managed to enter the world of the super-rich anyway. It happens to NBA benchwarmers who happen to get in the way of the kind of cash they throw around in pro sports. It happens. But it won't happen to me. I'm too old now, too far along. I'm going to be working until I'm dead or left drooling into a cup at the home. I'll have to.
Unless.
Unless I win the Lotto. Oh, I won't. I know that. But it's my only chance at the kind of F-U cash that makes life finally, truly, completely stress-free.
And, you see, that's why the lottery isn't, really, a tax on the stupid, not entirely. If you're rich, you look at the poor people lining up to spend their meager paychecks on the Lotto and you think, what morons. But if you're not rich, you aren't going to BECOME rich by saving those dollars. Put it in the highest yield savings account and you STILL won't become rich. In short, these people will never, ever become rich unless they win the Lotto. It's their only shot. It's most people's only shot.
Scoff if you will. Laugh at the dummies with their Lotto slips in the plastic holders the agents give their biggest suckers... er, best customers. Call it stupid. But are you going to deny them- us- me- the chance to dream that, someday, maybe, lightning will strike, hell will freeze over, the Cardinals will win the Super Bowl, and we'll finally be the kind of rich that really does buy happiness?
Go ahead, laugh and save your pennies. And I'll waste mine on the Lotto. Let's compare net worths when we're dead.
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