The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The Powerball payoff, as of yesterday, was 1.6 billion dollars, the biggest payout in gambling history if someone has the winning ticket. If not, the wheel of fortune will just go higher and higher and mobs will form at every 7-11, convenience store, mom and pop grocery from here to Tinbuktu. You think Black Friday is menacing, just wait til the fevered ticket buyers think they have a chance to be Bill Gates. Bodies should be crushed, tickets stolen, computers jammed, all for a chance in a bazillion they might be the One, the newest Billionaire, the nouveau riche. But like the Washington Lottery ads love to tout: you cannot win if you do not play.

I always thought the state gaming commissioners had it backwards – you cannot lose if you do not play. Or as the David Bromberg song sez: A man should never gamble more than he can stand to lose. Being poor most of my life, I couldn’t stand to lose much of anything. Being a graduate of 6th grade math, I could see the odds weren’t really in my favor. Actually not really in anybody’s favor … other than the Jackpot winner. Life itself always seemed gamble enough.

I know friends who buy $10 of Lotto tickets a week. Entertainment, they tell me when I ask what their thinking is. Ten dollars a week, 52 weeks in a year, year after year. I guess the entertainment value is the fantasy of what you’d do if you actually won. I’d hate that myself — it would be a constant reminder of what I’ll never be able to do. Seems to me they’d be happier being, oh, a little more realistic, but that’s just me. They say money won’t buy you happiness. I just don’t want lack of it to make me unhappy.

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