I’m in my office talking to a buddy at work. We’ve finished with the “work” part of the conversation and now we’re talking football. What else?
While we’re talking, I’m idly shooting a rubber band at the ceiling. Right above my desk there’s an air return that’s just a metal plate in the ceiling with a bazillion little holes in it. I load up my little finger gun and put it next to my ear and just let it fly. There’s a snick when I shoot, followed by a whap when it hits the air return, and then a plop as the rubber band hits the desk. So as we’re talking snick, whap, plop. Snick, whap, plop.
Then snick. We look at one another quizzically, then slowly up at the ceiling. There we see the rubber band amazingly stuck in one of the tiny holes.
He says to me, “Time to buy a lottery ticket, man” and we laugh. But I say, “Nope, I just burned all my luck for the week.”
I realize that this might be a glass half empty or a glass half full question, but I think there’s a shade of difference.
So what is it? Do you see a sign and obey it? Or do you see an omen and avoid it?
Neither. When it gets over 100 million dollars, I’ll sometimes buy a ticket. I figure I pay $1 to enjoy an hour’s worth of “what would I do if I won the lottery” and it’s not worth daydreaming over without at least 30 mil, after taxes in the lump sum payout.
Do you feel lucky when you do something out of the ordinary cool and think you’re on a roll or do you think when you do something out of the ordinary cool you’ve used up all your mojo and a lottery ticket is a waste of a buck?
You’ve never scored a big win at work and said to yourself, “Man, time to ask for that raise” or scored big at a table in Vegas and pulled back your chips and said, “Man, time to quit while you’re ahead.”
Not in relation to the lottery. There’s a chance of winning that’s just slightly non-zero. Nothing I do will influence that. Constrastingly, when you’ve done well at work, and choose that moment to ask for a raise you’re using psychology to actually influence the outcome. Unless you’re given raises on a randomized basis, in which case you’re pissing in the wind :).
I have a few rules. I’ll only buy a lottery ticket on the day of the drawing, when the jackpot is big enough so that even taking the cash payout will free me from ever having to work again while still living a life of leisure (read: $100 million) and if I happen to be in the gas station or whatever for a different reason.
So, practically speaking, I buy two lottery tickets a year.
I now see my mistake. I attempted to frame a question in terms of a widely used metaphor for getting lucky: “Hey, I got a great job! I just won the lottery! Let’s celebrate!” No one who says that is implying that great jobs are given out arbitrarily. And their friends have enough of a sense of humor to get it.
Intelligent people realize that the lottery is nothing more than a regressive–and voluntary–tax on the poor. Donald Trump doesn’t play. Ever. Neither does Charles Manson. Ever. Winning would mean nothing in their lives.
However, some people feel lucky at times and the lottery is an almost universal expression of that feeling. Forget the lottery. Do you feel lucky when something cool happens and you’re in a groove or if something cool happens do you think you’re ahead and you should just sit back and enjoy that ride?
Skald the Rhymer: I’ve been known to think, at such times, “Crap! I just wasted my luck on THAT?”
My point exactly. I shot a rubber band into an impossibly tiny hole and thought, “I’ve just wasted a million-to-one shot.” My buddy, on the other hand, thought I was rocking and rolling and I should go with fate.
Okay, yes I know what you’re talking about and I’ve had that conversation before. It was game-day, and my family had traveled a couple of hours without tickets in the hope we’d be able to buy some tickets from scalpers outside the stadium, a plan that has never failed us before. But we hadn’t counted on how important that particular game was, how pumped up the fans were, and consequently how hard tickets were going to be to find. We split up into two pairs, my parents and my sister and I, hoping to at least find a couple of separate pairs, or even a single and three, or whatever. Thought there’d be no way we’d all get to sit together, if we were lucky enough to get in at all. Can’t see anybody, anywhere, holding up any tickets, but lots of people looking to buy.
Then, random guy stops me and my sister–“you guys need tickets? I’ve got four I need to sell.” Long story short, we ended up sitting all together, on the 50-yard line, about 1/4 way up the stands. Great seats.
Some other lucky stuff happened that day, I don’t remember exactly what. Great parking spot, a table that suddenly opened up in the cafeteria, a free t-shirt giveaway. Stuff like that. We joked that we should go buy some lottery tickets, but we didn’t follow through. Dang it!
A few weeks ago I was buying breakfast and it came out to something like $4.63. As I went to pay, it seemed that I had exactly $4.63 in my pocket. So, I played the 3-numbers lottery game that day, saying “What the heck, that’s just too coincidental.”
I didn’t win. And I found out later I had a couple of bills and a penny stuck between my driver’s license and my work ID.
I’ll play the lottery if it’s above $50 million or so. I just played Mega Millions and Powerball, because they’re $54 and $97 million. I don’t particularly look to any other circumstances going on in my life, like shooting rubber bands through air vent holes (how many times does that happen?).
I do have one superstiion though. The only borough I will play in is Manhattan. So, even if the amounts are up there, if I’m in another borough and haven’t played, I won’t play.
Every time it’s over 80 million and I take notice (I certainly don’t watch for it to go over 80) I do the exact same thing. If I won 300k tomorrow, my life would not change in the slightest day to day. It would just mean a nice $100 dinner on Friday night and that my SO wouldn’t have to take out loans for law school.
