About that lottery ticket

I have a confession to make: I don’t know how to buy a lottery ticket.

I didn’t even know there was a way to buy a lottery ticket. I thought you just walked up to the cashier at the corner gas station that advertises lottery tickets and you buy one.

I didn’t know I had to make choices, like which lottery ticket to buy.

This became painfully clear to me, and much to the delight of my husband and daughter, when we stopped for gas on our way to the North Shore a few years ago.

“Here,” my husband said as he got out of the car to fuel up. He passed me a five-dollar bill. “Buy us a lottery ticket.”

“You buy lottery tickets?” I asked him, dumbfounded. I’d never seen this side of him in 30 years of marriage.

“Only when we go on vacation,” he told me. “It’s just fun to fantasize what I’d do if I won. It keeps me entertained on long drives.”

“I don’t know how to buy a lottery ticket,” I protested.

Our daughter, sixteen at the time, said from the backseat, “You just go in and buy one, Mom.”

“And how do you know that?” I asked. “You don’t buy lottery tickets.”

“It can’t be that hard,” she replied. “Everyone buys lottery tickets.”

“I don’t,” I pointed out.

“Jan, just go buy a ticket,” my husband said as he began to fill the gas tank.

I got out of the car and inside the store. I walked up to the cashier and asked for a lottery ticket.

“Which one?” she asked, pointing to the display next to the register.

Oh my gosh. There were at least ten different types of lottery tickets – scratch-offs, powerballs, pinballs – whatever.  I had no idea what to get, and I could feel the line of people beginning to form behind me. I couldn’t decide which was worse – holding up a line of impatient customers – or looking like an idiot who didn’t know how to buy a lottery ticket.

Feigning a confidence I didn’t feel, I grabbed the closest one. It had a loon on it, and since Minnesota’s state bird is a loon, I figured it was the right ticket.

Back in the car, my husband looked at my purchase. “That isn’t the right one,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I said. “It’s a ticket. For a lottery. And it’s got a loon on it for Minnesota.”

“You were supposed to get a Powerball ticket,” my daughter clarified. “Those are the million-dollar ones.”

“So sue me,” I responded.

My husband went into the store and bought a Powerball ticket.

“So did you win?” I asked.

“I won’t know till tonight when they have the drawing.”

“So if you don’t win tonight, that,” I pointed to his ticket, “isn’t the right one either, is it?”

He didn’t reply.

Hah. I’m not the only one who doesn’t know how to buy the right lottery ticket.