All my Christmas shopping is done. Actually I didn’t do any. I no longer do. I have a simple solution to all gift purchases, year round: scratch tickets.
Look. I have no taste, style or discretion. What am I going to buy for Blue Eyes, my daughters or grandchildren that will give them a shot at $250,000 or more? Certainly, I cannot deliver money in that tonnage. But I can give them a shot, a dream for at least five minutes.
The benefits of scratch tickets are obvious. No shopping. No crowds. No wrapping. Left to my own devices, I would award knives and flashlights to all comers.
There are those who disparage the scratch-off tactic, including my granddaughter Meara, who is truly grand and who scratched off three $5 tickets in a celebration of our mutual (honest to God) birthdays this week. I don’t know if it was the flu that was ravaging that 12-year-old starlet (she appeared in “Annie”), or the fact that grampie failed to come through with that $250,000 … again. But she looked mighty sad.
What was I going to buy a 12-year-old? A sweater from Beans, a winter coat? Some boots? Think of that pretty face if she matched those numbers and won $250,000. Then Grampie Emmet would have been her favorite … for life.
I realized the potential idiocy of scratch tickets a decade ago when Texas Larry turned 50 years old. Blue Eyes and I chipped in for 50 scratch tickets. We sat on his tiny deck and watched with anticipation as he scratched … scratched … and scratched some more. Nothing. He didn’t even win a dollar.
That perfect summer day should have cured me for life. Didn’t.
I declared a scratch ticket moratorium until … at least the next party.
I persist despite the odds. Last year, daughter Aran got about $40 from 40 birthday tickets. There are those who say just give her the 40 bucks and let her spend it the way she wants. But what about that two minute possibility of winning a quarter million or more?
Perhaps the problem is that I always buy my tickets at the Stop & Go, better known locally as Fowlie’s Overpriced Emporium, in Camden. I hate to think how much money I have left there for lottery tickets and scratch-off tickets. The owner goes to Florida every winter and I fear that I am paying his air fare.
How shall we approach this problem? My father, a totally engrossed Red Sox fan, always remarked when a .300 batter had gone hitless for four at bats or more that “he’s due.” And often he was.
Should I continue to shovel money at Fowlie’s Overpriced Emporium figuring the odds are on my side and I certainly am “due?”
Or should I start spreading my business around, buying my tickets at a different gas station or even a supermarket. I notice that those markets sell a lot of lottery winners.
The problem is that if I abandon Fowlie’s, then he sells a winning lottery ticket to someone else for $30 million or more, I shall have to hang myself in the Cobb Manor barn or at least swim to Vinalhaven.
I think it is too late to stop now.
Merry Christmas, kids.
Scratch.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.