Money Don’t Matter Tonight

When you’re not looking, you can quickly become something you never expected. Or do something you never thought you’d do. Before you panic, no, I didn’t knock over a liquor store. But I’m starting to see how a moral compass can skew should you become desperate.

BFam is an avid lottery ticket buyer. I have repeatedly scolded him for this “activity of leisure”. I’m trying hard not to call it a habit, but what would you call a situation where someone ritualistically purchases these little pieces of paper every Tuesday and Friday? Sounds like a habit to me. My biggest issue has been less about buying the tickets. If you don’t play, you don’t win. I think that’s the slogan, at least for the Ohio Lottery it is. And I can see the logic. It’s like a gambler’s creedo. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Buying the tickets and NEVER LOOKING TO SEE IF YOU’VE WON? That’s my issue. And I know he’s a scatter brain. And I know multi-tasking is not one of his strong suits. Or following through. Or picking up his dirty socks. Or putting away his shoes. All his many, many, many shoes. Oh, the shoes. I dream of those shoes, and not in a good way. Like in a Gene Kelly-Fred Astaire-Singin’ In The Rain on my face-type of way. Or I’m falling down the stairs because I’ve just been attacked by a pair of Air Jordan’s-type of way.

Where was I?

Yes. The tickets. So the tickets. They accumulate. Like those stupid shoes. And I open drawers and the tickets are jumping out at me, taunting me with their lack of monetary value. Singing tra-la-la like little people in Munchkin land. And before you know it, I’m convinced I’m living in a never ending episode of the Twilight Zone and it’s the end of the world and I’m the only person left and I love books and I’m in a room with my glasses to read all the books left behind in all the world except my glasses are broken and now I can’t read them, but instead of all this happening I’m swimming in a sea of lottery tickets and NONE OF THEM ARE WINNERS.

GAH!

And I’ve made this situation worse for myself because now things are so strapped, so unbelievably tight, that I’ve duped myself into believing I must spend money I don’t have on these little pieces of paper that leave me more broke than I was when I started.

But if I don’t play, I don’t win. At least that’s what they tell me.