Lotto fever

"The 6/49 jackpot tonight is an estimated $30 MILLION DOLLARS!"
Well, slap my ass and call me Sally....I don't care. And furthermore, you couldn't make me care, not even if you turned in into a Powerball lottery and increased the payout by an order of magnitude.
If you play the lotto, more power to you. I hope you win. Myself, I choose not to.
I used to play, though. Back when I was a university student and money was almost a meaningless concept, I' d pick up a few scratch tickets now and again, and if the national lotteries (6/49 and Super 7) got above a certain threshold, I'd plunk down a two dollar coin or two.
(Aside: The popular name for a $2.oo coin in Canada is a 'toonie'. I can put up with 'loonie'--that coin does, after all, have a loon on it--but 'toonie' offends my English major sensibilities. At the very least, it should be spelled 'twonie'. I tried to--ha-ha--coin the word 'doubloon' to describe our two dollar coin...it looks like a doubloon, and it's a 'double-loon'...but my word didn't stick. Oh well.)
When I worked at 7-Eleven, my last task every morning before I went home was to boot up the lottery machine, make copies of all the winning numbers, and transcribe them into the book you find at every Ontario Lottery kiosk. On Sundays, this was a real chore: 6/49, Lottario, two Encores, Winner Take All, and Keno, together with a bunch of listings of Pro-Line winning scores and a (usually long) printout of upcoming Pro-Line games.
I kept an eye on the jackpots, because they directly influenced my job. On nights when a $15- or $20-million prize was up for grabs, you'd spend a good chunk of your time printing out lottery tickets. The day after the draw was always much worse: people would come in with huge piles of tickets and expect us to check them. Checking one or two was no big deal--maybe thirty seconds work. Checking twenty or thirty, on the other hand, when there was a line of customers waiting (there was always a line of customers waiting), could put a real crimp in your day.
I never understood the people who hoarded their tickets for six months before looking to see if they were winners. If I'm a millionaire, damnit, I want to know about it. Right NOW.

One Sunday, as I was printing out numbers and payout lists, I noticed the $20 million jackpot the night before had not been won. The machine told me that the next draw would be worth an estimated $24 million. As I was digesting that, a man came in and asked me to check his tickets. Fetching a not-entirely-invisible sigh, I started into the pile. About halfway through, the machine issued its familiar little tune and informed me my customer had won $800.00. Not a mind-blowing amount, but nothing to sneeze at, either. I couldn't pay it out (retailers are only allowed to pay out up to $200.00), so I gave him his ticket back together with an authorization slip for him to mail away to the Ontario Lotteries Commission. Whereupon he took out sixteen fifty dollar bills and proceeded to buy $800.00 worth of tickets for the next 6/49 draw.
That shook me up a little. Money may have been almost meaningless to me then, but not quite that meaningless: $800.00 would have bought me quite a few dinners, cassettes, books, magazines, and rounds of pinball up at the arcade.
Next Sunday, checking through his eighty (!) tickets, I was shook up even more. Care to guess how much that $800.00 yielded him in prizes?
Not one red stinkin' cent. Seventeen free tickets (and I don't know what came of them), but zero actual cash dollars.
That got me reflecting. The previous $20 million draw had not been won despite untold millions of tickets having been sold. This $24 million pot had been split three ways. Three out of even more untold millions of tickets. Yes, I know there are subsidiary prizes, but nobody ever buys a ticket in the hopes of winning the $70,000 you get if you're one number out.
Those struck me as rather crappy odds.
My mom, back when she ran a variety store, once bought up an entire roll of scratch tickets. Just to see what would happen. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall she got back about a third of her money. Again, pretty crappy odds.
Consider: would you select the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 in a 6/49 draw? If not, why not? They have as much chance of coming up as any other set of numbers!

I have since decided that lotteries are for those folks who believe they don't pay quite enough in taxes. I believe I pay entirely too much in taxes given the level of government services I receive, so I choose to abstain.

There's another reason I don't play, though: because I might, just might, win. And I wouldn't want $30 million. Before you dismiss this assertion as a lie or the raving of a lunatic, hear me out a second.

I would take $100,000. In a heartbeat I'd take it. A million would give me a bit of pause, but I'd certainly accept the cheque. Thirty million, though? Let alone the three hundred and forty million in the U.S. Powerball lottery? No bloody way.
First off, what the hell would I do with all that money? Buy a house, check. Have one built, more like. That'd eat up, at most, a mil. Pay off the mortgages of friends and family: at most another mil. After that? Travel. There are a lot of places I'd like to see, and some of them cost a mint to get to. The thing about travel, though, is that it gets tiring: I enjoy coming home from a trip every bit as much as the trip itself.
Charity? Sure, but I'd pick my charity carefully. Most of them, I feel, are actually in business to perpetuate themselves. They'd probably be very angry to hear me say so, but when's the last time you heard anything promising coming from, say, the cancer people? Millions upon millions of dollars spent, and not much to show for it, eh? It's almost like...a lottery! If they ever get lucky and find a cure, a lot of people will be out of jobs...
I hear you saying, Ken, I'll take some of that dough off your hands. And yes, I'd gladly give you some, because I know your motives are pure...but should I win a huge pile of dough, everybody I meet from then on will be looking for their share, and I'm not prepared for that. No, I honestly believe thirty million smackers is more hassle than it's worth.
But good luck to you.