The lottery makes you mad.

When you don’t buy tickets, you feel stupid when someone else wins $182 million, the largest jackpot in US history. You listen to the news. You stare at the headline in the newspaper. You tell yourself that if you had only bought some tickets, you could be the one receiving $7 million each year for the next 26 years.

(The Michigan winner claimed he was a first-time player who only spent $100. Why do so many winners claim that they won the first time they played? We know they’re just rubbing it in. We don’t believe them, not even for a second.)

But you didn’t buy any tickets in the Multi-State Big Game Lottery, even though it’s easier than ever on the Internet to pay $2 for a $1 ticket. You know that every time you buy tickets, someone else wins, and then you feel stupid for having thought, on the day of the drawing, that maybe it would be your lucky day. You resent the time you wasted thinking about the drawing, imagining how your numbers would be picked, one after another, and how you’d quit your job and travel the world.

But you didn’t win. You didn’t even buy any tickets.

Anyway, you say, $7 million isn’t all that much. There are a lot of people who make more, especially CEOs who get rich off failing companies. And there’s Kevin Brown, the pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who’s making more than twice as much, $15.7 million, and he only has to work hard a few hours a couple days each week.

But then you remember that the Cincinnati Reds’ Ken Griffey Jr. makes $7 million, and he’s a darn good hitter and a terrific fielder who has to work six days a week, so maybe $7 million isn’t exactly chump change. It sure would come in handy for bread and milk.

You kick yourself again for not having spent the lousy $20 for 10 tickets. If you had bought the tickets and won, the pot would have been split three ways. It would have served the winners right.

You’re comforted by George Kassab, owner of Mr. K’s Party Shoppe where one of the winning tickets was bought. He must feel like a chump since he only got $2,000 from Michigan. He had to watch John Sweeney, the owner of the gas station in Illinois that sold the other ticket, get a check for $1.8 million. You visualize Kassab, his face contorted in anger, counting the $1.798 million he lost.

You imagine yourself owning a store in Illinois that would be ablaze with neon lights and have hawkers trying to pull people off the road to buy tickets, trying to convince them that milk and bread for their kids weren’t nearly as important as buying a 1-in-76-million chance to win the Big Game. You’re smart. You’d know that your chance of selling a winning ticket was a lot better than your chance of actually buying one. Your store would be filled with blinking lights and whirring machines, seductively whispering: "Buy a chance – buy a chance at fame and fortune," as customers roamed the aisles.

Forget Michigan, you think. They must be conflicted by old-fashioned morality about getting something for nothing. They give so little to the seller that he’s probably mad when one of his customers wins the big prize.

Of course, you’re also comforted by the poor slobs who matched 5 out of 6 numbers. Sure they got $150,000, which would have bought 600 shares of eBay on March 25, but they have to live the rest of their lives knowing that if they had got just one more number right – just one – they would have been set for life.

You drive into San Francisco and pass the eBay billboard on the side of the road that proclaims: "Money is the root of all evil. Blah, blah, blah." You laugh. Clever people always seem to figure things out. Right on, you think: Money is the root of all evil: Buy, buy, buy. Who needs the outdated morality of our ancestors? Did they have big houses, big cars, a TV in every room? Could they buy anything they wanted on the Internet?

You decide that next time you’ll go for it. You might even win the crummy $150,000 consolation prize, which wouldn’t buy a lot, except maybe 1,230 shares of eBay, a much better deal than a month ago.

It’s worth $20 to reach for the American dream.

- Dave Badtke can be contacted at: www.CarquinezReview.com; Dave@Badtke.com; PO Box 763, Benicia, CA 94510; or by calling 707-479-7702.

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