What Desperation Looks Like



A copy of all the tickets we bought at work, which has not been
immune from lotto fever.

A friend at work came by my office and asked if I wanted to chip in to the office lotto pool. "Everybody's doing it," she said. "Don't you want to be cool?"

Okay, I added the last part, but I caved into peer pressure anyway and handed over my five bucks, admitting, "It hurts to throw this away."

"Throw it away?" My friend looked at me in surprise. "We're going to win, didn't you know that?"

"How do you know that?"

My friend shrugged with a smile, "I just have a feeling!"

She left and I remembered an email from another friend, reminding me to tell my parents to buy their tickets. She also told me she had a feeling she was going to win, but added, "I wouldn't need all the money. I'd be okay with just a couple million."

And this, my friends are the symptoms known as lotto fever. Never mind that you have a better chance of dying from a flesh eating bacteria. Or getting eaten by a shark. Or any of the other of depressing statistics TMZ reported. Even if you only have a 1 in 176 MILLION chance of winning, you're still going to buy a ticket.

So I have my five dollars ready for the next lotto pool. Just in case.