Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 9:33:55 PM
TORONTO (July 9, 2008) -- A lot of people sneer at lotto tickets, calling them A Tax On The Stupid. These people say that if we saved our $3 per week and put it in the stock market, we would get rich more quickly than we ever will by playing the lottery. Just for th record, I know that. I know my chances of winning are 1:48 million, especially since I am middle aged and white. I also know that putting $3 a week in the bank or $12 per month, and being charged $11.00 a month in *reporting fees* is just another way to waste my money. I prefer to waste my money on Super 7 Tickets.
A Super Seven ticket costs 1/4 as much as a movie, unless you buy snacks in which case it is 10% as much as a movie. A movie lasts two hours; a Super Seven ticket lasts a week. A movie is someone elses ideas written down for me to enjoy; but a Super Seven ticket is MY ideas, planned in that delightfully vague way that daydreams always take.
When I was young and I minded that I had hardly any friends, I used to imagine taking out a full page ad in the New York Times reading IF YOUR NAME IS NOT ON THIS LIST, COME TO MY PARTY AT LINDYS! (That was when there still was a Lindys). Then I would list all the Popular Kids and anybody Mama asked me why I could not be more like. Large, unsmiling bouncers would be at the door to turn these people away. I would also take great pleasure in informing any of the guys in the neighbourhood that if I was not good enough for them poor, I was way too good for them rich. And so on.
These days, besides looking after my family (something that occupies my mind a lot), I think about travelling to racing venues where people without cars and/or independent incomes cannot go. Monaco, for example. To do the Grand Prix of Monaco properly would cost $17,000 for the week, not even counting the air fare or the helicopter to the track. Today I got a marvelous proposal for a five day trip to the Autosport show in Britain for $5,000 without including air fare. Then there is the young German driver who had to give up his racing season after 3 races ... I met him a couple of years go and I like him, and I could give him all he would need for the season and have our website (
www.rfmsports.com) on his car. I would also be able to get Shane Lewis one more drive at Le Mans, and maybe talk him out of those stupid Grand Am cars and into a top line ALMS ride. Everybody likes Shane Lewis. Guy Cosmo, too. Maybe I could finance a drive for the two of them. I could call the team Whupazz Racing. That would be fun.
Then there are people whose stories I see in the paper. There was a lady of 75 the other day who is living in a squalid building owned by one of our City Councilmen, who had to abandon her mattress because it was full of mice. I would move that lady into decent housing because I would pray that someone who had won the Super Seven would do for my Mama if they saw her in need. I would send kids to camp if they promised to study hard all winter. I would give my church enough money so they could have the food bank open all week instead of only for one day. (There are a lot of thoughtless people in my church.) I would retire to Menorah Park and have people look after me, and take taxicabs everywhere.
And I would have time to volunteer.
I even daydream about how I would stand in front of the teevee cameras and say that now our lot would all be living on easy street and for the rest of my life I was going to do only what I wanted to do. These are fine speeches that I make from my shower in the morning!
Playing the lottery is not a stupid tax or a waste of time, if you keep on working and just take time out now and then to imagine.
Just imagine.
And to all those people who remind me that I am not going to win, I say simply, well then you need not wait to be invited to my party.
Friday the lotto is $15 million. This could be my day.