Lottery ticket baits players into dreaming

Anyone who coughs up a dollar for a lottery ticket suffers from delusions of grandeur.

If not simply to buy our way into a rich fantasy life, to get a few kicks by dreaming the impossible dream, what’s the point of handing over our hard-earned money every week in a gamble of such ridiculous odds? Certainly, it’s not because we expect to win.

So why is it, then, that when we read about a person who has beaten those absurd odds, who actually did become the fabulously wealthy person he’d always fantasized himself to be, the lucky bugger often turns out to be someone who swears he has no intention of changing anything about his life?

The waitress at the diner in Fleabag, Ariz., insists she’ll be right back to work – in a new car, perhaps, but on time as always for the early shift – because, well, she happens to love what she’s been doing for the last 25 years, which is serving up greasy grub to the regulars who are so nice that she’s grown to think of them as family.

Same with the man who picks up trash in the mornings. He’ll swear to the reporters at lottery headquarters that he would never allow his new found millions to alter his humble yet immensely satisfying life of hanging off the back of a garbage truck while helping to keep his community clean.

The most recent addition to this “Modest Millionaire Club” is Larry Paradis of Topsham, who just won nearly six million dollars in the Tri-State Megabucks drawing. After buying lottery tickets three times a week for years, the man finally hits the jackpot we all dream about. He’s suddenly very rich. He can go anywhere and do most anything he likes.

So what does Paradis plan to do with his bundle? He says he’ll buy a new car, that’s what. Then he’ll take his family to Disney World. After that, however, he’ll just go right on running his lawn-mowing and landscaping business, and maybe even get a little crazy with his loot by splurging on some new equipment.

Who are these perfectly contented people, anyway, and why are they out there buying lottery tickets in the first place if they have no intention of using their winnings to pursue a life of decadence?

When I posed the question to my family around the dinner table during a recent visit to New Jersey, they all just shook their heads and suggested that people like that must lack imagination.

“First thing I’d do is get a house right on the beach, maybe somewhere down in the Florida keys,” said my brother, who dreams big but lives as small as the rest of us. “I’d live like Ernest Hemingway, without the writing part.”

We all had to agree that a beach house in the tropics would be a fine idea. No more slogging through icy winters for us. No sir. We would know how to act like proper millionaires. Jumping into the fantasy fest, my brother-in-law, the maintenance man, gushed about how he would be able to fish on the ocean every day if he were rich. He might even buy his own big sport-fishing boat, as a diversion, and hire a crew to haul the seasick tourists around.

“But that could get old pretty fast,” offered my sister, the ever-practical teacher. “I mean, you can’t just lie on the beach in front of your beach house all day. You’d have to do something to keep busy or you’d go crazy. You’d need a purpose. Hey, what if you were the captain of the fishing boat?”

She had a point. Being idle millionaires would not be appealing for long. But actually running the boat would mean long hours of hard work and responsibility, and isn’t that exactly what we were trying to escape with all of our dough?

“OK, what if you ran a little shop on the dock?” she asked. “Nothing fancy. Maybe you could sell fishing supplies to the tourists who go on your boat.”

Like what? we asked.

“Well, they’d need bait, wouldn’t they?” my brother chimed in. “You could work half a day cutting up squid and clams, then go lay on the beach and drink margaritas. How stressful could that be?”

We all agreed it probably wouldn’t be too tough at all. And if we felt like taking off a day – hey, we could hire someone to prepare the day’s bait. What the heck? We were rich, and when you’re rich…

“Bait?” I asked, bringing the weird dinner table fantasy to a halt. “Listen to us! We win six million dollars and all we can think to do with it is cut bait for tourists in some stinking shack in the Florida keys? Man, we’re so pitiful that we don’t deserve to be rich.”

Eventually, we all had to agree that maybe those modest lottery millionaires have the right idea after all. After all, a little imagination and a lot of money can be a dangerous combination if you’re not careful.

At least Paradis had the good sense to take his family to Disney World.