Scratch off

All the talk about area school systems with such money problems that they want to lay off coaches and teachers, can't run school buses, can't get new textbooks and can't build enough schools made me wonder about all the Tennessee lottery money that was supposed to go to education. Then I remembered a column I wrote a few years ago about trying to buy my first lottery tickets. "Like to hear it? Here it go..."

It’s sometimes called an idiot tax, but figuring out how to buy a Tennessee Lottery ticket made me feel pretty stupid.
I mean, each time I thought about going into Mapco to buy one just for a lark, I’d get intimidated by some construction worker who reeled off his selections like an auctioneer: “I’ll take four Cash Threes, a Lotto 5, four Powerball quick picks and a pack of Winstons.”
Somehow a guy who hasn’t got sense enough to turn off his truck’s engine while filling the gas tank knows what to choose from the dizzying array of lottery tickets displayed next to the “energy pills” and beef jerky.
Under the guise of research, I’ve visited many local convenience stores, though somehow I always came away with more Hostess Ding Dongs than lottery tickets. Hey, we all have our guilty pleasures.
I finally figured out that there are instant games and online games. But the decisions I had to make were staggering. Do I scratch something or pick numbers? Should I choose my own numbers or let the computer pick them for me? Does Hostess really consider one pack of Ding Dongs to be two servings?
The Cash 4 game alone has 13 different ways to pick your numbers. It’d be easier to stand in the Wal-Mart line behind the woman who’s pushing two carts and hollering at four kids.
I never thought of Williamson County as a lottery hotbed, though officials say we rank 15th out of 95 Tennessee counties in ticket sales.
So why not join the fun?, I asked myself. I know, I know, there are those who believe the lottery is gambling and that gambling is a sin. But so are pride and faultfinding, and anyway, that’s a whole other column.
So I lined up behind the rest of the sinners who had chosen to throw away their entertainment dollars, and I told the jovial Mapco clerk I wanted one Powerball quick pick and four Lotto 5 numbers.
She gestured to the back of the store, where I had to get a separate form to bubble in my own numbers. That display had a sign pointing out that the Moores Lane Mapco had had a $25,000 winner, which I decided would come in handy when the twins leave for college at the same time.
You can guess how this story ends. The two most pitiful aspects of my lottery ticket experience are that my husband had to wake me up at 10:34 to see the Lotto 5 numbers on TV, and that I actually expected to win something.
I didn’t think I’d get the $75 gazillion Powerball prize, but the lottery Web site has enough pictures of folks who have won a couple grand that I thought I’d at least get some new den furniture with my “investment.”
Either that or a year’s supply of Ding Dongs.