The lottery jackpot is mine to lose
OLG, you’re tricking me into thinking that I could be the next big winner
This is one of those weeks when it’s hard to not buy a lottery ticket.
In recent days, I can almost hear the universe whispering in my ear as I sigh and scrutinize my online banking statements: “Someone has to win.” Though I know better — statistically, I have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning while fighting off a shark than winning millions — lottery mania is upon us.
Well, it’s upon me. It is now hugging me so tight, I can barely breathe.
This happens every couple of years. That’s when a jackpot gets so numer- ically absurd, it smashes the news cycle like the Incredible Hulk. Then people who don’t normally play the lottery are blinded to the slim-to-nothing odds after getting entangled in a creeping delusion: someone has to win and that someone is me.
On Saturday, the Mega Millions jackpot south of the border jumped to $1.6 billion (U.S.). Tuesday’s jackpot, now a world record, has sparked breathless coverage, with fantasyinducing headlines such as: “If you win the Mega Millions jackpot, you could be richer than Taylor Swift.”
Meanwhile, the Powerball prize is up to $620 million (U.S.). And if you don’t feel like crossing the border with a bag of toonies, a notepad scrawled with lucky numbers and future excuses for the IRS, Friday’s Lotto Max draw in Ontario is also a humdinger: $115 million.
As the OLG noted in a news release this weekend: “Since its launch in Sep- tember 2009, Ontario Lotto Max players have won over $4.4 billion, including 60 jackpot wins and 491 MaxMillions prizes, right across the province.”
Stop it, OLG. You are tricking me into believing I could be next.
The cable footage in recent days is also making it impossible to not peer into the future and reimagine your life on a private island with tuxedoed butlers. The wide-angle shots of everyday folks lined up outside convenience stores seem to be activating a part of my reptilian brain that deals with herds and proactive regret.
People lined up for anything is a visual drug. But when those people are queued with the theoretical promise of swapping a couple of bucks for millions, the downward psychological pressure on everyone else to join them is strong.
We are pack animals. We want what others may get in the hunt. If I were to
stumble upon a crowd of people waiting for free shots outside an STD clinic, I’d roll up my sleeve and get in line: my odds of gonorrhea may be slim, but who knows?
Who knows? That is the enticing, enchanting, altogether dangerous, two-word abstraction the universe is now whispering into ears across the continent amid a historic breakout of lottery mania. Who knows if you or I will win? Personally, I don’t think it will be you, because I’m sure it will be me — but who knows?
Four years ago, a rather depressing survey found that “winning the lottery” was the retirement plan for 34 per cent of Canadians.
I try not to lecture the media. But, honestly, for everything else, there are cookie-cutter bad stories that can yin-yang any subject. Yet when dealing with lottery mania, the media fails to dump cold water on our hallucinating heads.
Even recent Mega Millions stories about how “money doesn’t buy happiness” come across as ridiculous. We get that money can’t buy happiness, media! But if I must feel a tad morose while motoring to the country club in my new Bugatti, so be it.
That’s a risk I’m willing to take. In fact, reading recent stories about previous winners who blew their unexpected fortunes or ended up with the so-called “lottery curse” has only convinced me I am equally bad with money and, therefore, now is my time to win big. How is going from poor-torich-to-poor any different than just staying poor?
If anything, these hard-luck stories have dredged up memories about the gambling luck I’ve had in the past. Let’s see. There was that junior high raffle in which I took home a pleather ottoman. There was the food processor obtained in a hospital sweepstakes. A couple of weeks ago, we were at Woodbine Racetrack and I somehow knew a horse called “Fact Checking” would win, which it did.
When I was a kid, our family entered a draw at the CNE. That night, sitting around our cramped downtown apartment, I have a vivid memory of my parents and friends whooping like maniacs while watching the evening news and discovering we had won the Mon- te Carlo. My mother hadn’t screamed that loud since Luke and Laura got married on General Hospital. Of course, not long after winning the car, it was stolen in New York while we were visiting relatives. But that was the universe whispering, “Easy come, easy go.”
This time it is whispering: Someone has to win and that someone is you. Farewell, beloved Star readers. After Friday, I will miss you all dearly.
But a mind-blowing windfall is the price I must now pay. Vinay Menon is the Star’s pop culture columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @vinaymenon