You can't lose if you don't play
A story about losing the lottery every damn time
Hello and welcome! I’m Michael Estrin. I write Situation Normal for people who take their humor with a side of humanity and a dash of insight. (Read to the end for a picture of Mortimer, plus an AI rendering of Mortimer gambling🐶)
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OK, enough business. Time for the story👇
You can't lose if you don't play
The day after Christmas, Christina and I drove from her sister’s house in Spring Hill, Florida to the airport in Tampa. We were flying home to Los Angeles, but first we needed to take care of some business. So, I pulled into a Wawa gas station, where I saw two men tempting fate by smoking a joint while refueling their pickup truck. I parked our car beyond what I thought might be the blast zone, just in case the Florida Men opted for a real high octane experience.
“Do you want anything?” I asked Christina.
“Just our winnings, babe.”
Our “winnings” were the lottery scratchers that Christina’s mom had put in our Christmas stockings. The face value of those scratchers had been $20, but after we scratched ‘em, the actual value tumbled to $12. That felt more like losings to me, but I persevered. I held my head up high, stuck out my chest, and told myself that I was a winner as I went inside the Wawa to collect our twelve bucks.
Inside, I gave the cashier our scratchers. I was little nervous because I’m not a gambler, unless you count my decision to visit a Wawa where the other customers think it’s a good idea to pair gasoline with an open flame.
“What do you want?” the cashier asked.
The question caught me off guard. Was there some sort of gambler’s code I needed to use? Were the scratchers legit? Had I made a scratcher faux pas?
“Um… money?”
“You mean cash?”
I thought about asking for crypto, but that felt too 2022.
“Most people take their winnings in scratchers,” he explained.
“Oh, gotcha. I don’t really play.”
The cashier raised an eyebrow as he opened the register.
“They were stocking stuffers,” I explained. “For Christmas.”
The cashier handed me a ten and two singles.
“You can’t lose, if you don’t play,” he said.
When I stepped outside, I was relieved to see that the stoners weren’t engulfed in flames. But those particular Florida Men were the least of my concerns. As we drove to the airport, and for our entire flight home, I couldn’t stop thinking about another Florida Man, the Wawa cashier, who sold scratchers, cigarettes, and snacks, but dispensed wisdom for free.
You can’t lose, if you don’t play
Before my grandfather died, he told my father that California would have a lottery someday. My grandfather gave my father some numbers to play, just in case his prediction about the lottery came true. As it turned out, grandpa didn’t live long enough to see California start a lottery, but my father lived long enough to play the numbers bequeathed to him for decades.
Once or twice, I remember my dad wining big—a few hundred bucks. But mostly he’d lose a few bucks, or rarely, win a few bucks. It didn’t really matter, though. Dad always rolled his winnings (and losings) back into his lottery fund.
“In the grand scheme of things, I’ve come out ahead,” Dad told me once.
I never checked the receipts on that claim, but I doubt that my father made money from his weekly lottery habit. I think it was just something to do—an amusement that made every trip to the gas station more exciting, an inchoate fortune to fuel the kinds of dreams that are too silly to share with other people.
Gambling makes me nervous, so I never picked up Dad’s low-stakes lottery habit. When he died, the numbers his father gave him—numbers that were so lucky they materialized before the advent of California’s lottery—went with my father to his grave. The only time I play any kind of lottery is Christmas.
As a Jew, the rituals of Christmas, when my people eat Chinese food and go to the movies, escape me. I understand the Christmas basics: the tree, the presents, family time. But I find other aspects of Christmas confusing. Why do some families open presents on Christmas Eve, while others insist on Christmas Day? Why do some families eat ham, while other families eat turkey, but Italian American families seem to eat ham and turkey and all these awesome Italian dishes, like gravy, which is actually what non-Italians call sauce? And what’s the deal with Mistletoe and kissing? It’s creepy, right?
But the thing that really baffles me about Christmas are the stocking stuffers. Under the tree, there are the big presents. Awesome! But there are also little presents stuffed inside of stockings, which worries me, because I can’t help but think that there are thousands of sock-less Santas haunting America’s malls on Christmas. Also, how are the little presents supposed to compete with the big presents? Those big presents made it onto the list—the one that was so important it was checked twice! But the stocking stuffers? No list for them. To me, stocking stuffers feel like an unnecessary after thought.
“It’s a hat on a hat,” I complained to Christina. “After we finish opening the real presents, we’re going to open the other presents? That’s weird.”
Christina called me a Grinch. Maybe that was fair. Or, maybe I just had notes. I’m not sure, because like I said, I’m a Christmas neophyte. But I couldn’t stop thinking about stocking stuffers, even after we got home. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my beef wasn’t with Christmas, or even stocking stuffers, it was with the scratchers.
“Is this normal?” I asked on New Year’s Eve. “Do other families put scratchers in stocking stuffers?”
“I think so,” Christina said.
“And your family has always done this?”
“I dunno. I don’t think we did it when I was a kid.”
“Your grandparents never gave you scratchers?”
“I don’t think so. What about your grandparents?”
“For birthdays and Hanukkah, we got silver dollars or two-dollar bills.”
Christina smiled. Her grandparents had also given her silver dollars and two-dollar bills back in the day, because that’s what grandparents did in the 1980s. That was normal. If you were a grandparent in the 1980s, it meant that you probably lived through The Great Depression, which wasn’t actually great, but it was depressing. Throughout the 1930s, rich people were downgraded to middle class people, middle class people were downgraded to poor people, and poor people were forced to stand in long lines for soup that was served in dust bowls, but there was no soup, just a film crew to document the misery. Like I said, it was depressing.
And tough!
Very tough.
So tough that everyone walked ten miles in the snow searching for a better cliche.
The thing that made life so tough back then was that money was scarce. But that made everyone who lived through the Great Depression frugal as fuck.
“Our grandparents wouldn’t stand for this shit,” I told Christina. “You know what a silver dollar is worth today?”
“A dollar?”
“Exactly! And what about a two-dollar bill?”
“Two dollars?”
“Right again! Maybe our grandparents didn’t know how to make a dollar and cent in this world, but they sure as shit understood value.”
“So you’re anti-scratcher?”
“Big time, baby. Because what is a scratcher?”
Christina shrugged.
“It’s a lie. You give them a buck, they give you a piece of paper. You scratch off the foil, make a mess, next thing you know you’re holding a worthless piece of paper.”
“Not necessarily,” Christina protested. “You could be a winner.”
“But we always lose. Everyone always loses.”
“We won twelve bucks.”
“We started with twenty! We lost eight dollars, and all we had to show for it were foil crumbs and worthless tickets. It’s basically cash for trash.”
“Cash for trash is a good slogan,” Christina said. “Not for the lottery, but for something… maybe a dump!”
“The dump doesn’t pay you, you pay the dump. That’s how that shit works. But the lottery has everyone fooled. We’re running around exchanging actual money for trash.”
“I think it funds the schools,” Christina said.
“But everyone says the schools are underfunded and terrible. So now what we have is a bunch of people paying cash for trash to fund the schools? It’s a mess. If my grandparents saw this, there’d be hell to pay. What do you mean you pay for schools by buying trash, Michael, that sounds meshuga. Also, you are so fortunate to live in a world where bowls aren’t made of dust.”
“Well, maybe you’ve got a point,” Christina said. “It does seem like silver dollars and two-dollar bills make more financial sense.”
I was right! I felt good. I felt vindicated. I felt seen. Next Christmas, I vowed, I would put a stop to this lottery madness.
“You can’t tell my mom,” Christina warned.
“Why not? She’s the one who buys the scratchers. I’ll be doing her a favor. Her stocking stuffers are about to get a lot more valuable.”
“Yeah, but it’s not about that. It’s about the fun of maybe winning.”
“Even if you know you will always lose?”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t play, you can’t lose,” I sighed.
“Now that is a good slogan! Although not for the lottery, obviously.”
“It’s not mine. I got it at Wawa.”
Christina gave me a quizzical look.
“The gas station where we stopped to cash in our losings before our flight,” I explained. “You know, where we saw two lucky Florida Men.”
“Someone won the lottery!?”
“No, everyone loses the lottery. Haven’t you been listening? I’m talking about the two guys smoking a joint while pumping gas. They’re lucky to be alive.”
Stick around and chat!
You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers.
Do you play the lottery, or are you a winner? Tell your story!
Why silver dollars and two dollar bills? Explain!
The lottery needs a new slogan. Any ideas?
Why didn’t the Florida Men who were smoking dope while pumping gas burst into flames? Wrong answers only!
Next Christmas is more than 350 days away, but I need ideas for stocking stuffers. What’ve you got for me?
Something very cool!
invited me to take the Beyond Questionnaire, and I accepted! Check out the answers from yours truly right here👇 
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Last thing…
Every week, I read your Sunday report to She Who Must Be Obeyed. If it makes her laugh out loud, Lynn has to make breakfast. Thanks to you, Michael, I am up five pounds!
I rarely play the lottery. I tossed in at work when the prize was in the billions but otherwise I mostly forget the thing exists. Gambling isn't fun for me. My mom grew up in the Great Depression and passed on her frugality to me.
Also, I had a friend who won the California lottery back in the Nineties. He split 8 million with his dad, paid out over the next 20 years. I figure that knowing someone who won makes me statistically less likely to win.