Lottery Winnings

I wanted the kids to have the experience of buying a lottery and trying out their luck. So, one day, while walking through the streets of town, we picked up a few tickets for the Sunday lottery, and gave the kids a quick run-down on how it works. While they were not so pleased about the concept of losing nearly a third to government taxes, it was a lot of fun for the entire family to divide up potential winnings in the ratio of our respective ages, and imagine what each would do with their “share”.

Next, came the day of results.

After a number of Google searches, I finally managed to locate the badly-designed website of the State lottery and navigate to the results page. My 8-year-old son happened to be in the house at the time, so I pulled him alongside to see the action…

Papa: Now, watch while we check on the results of the lottery tickets we bought last week.

Tiger: Ok, I want to see that!

Papa: Here goes… (checking one by one and not finding any of the numbers in the winning list).

Papa: Hmmm, looks like none of the tickets we chose have won anything.

Tiger: What do you mean?!

Papa: I mean, we checked each number, and we did not win anything.

Tiger: What kind of lottery is that? What do we DO to win?!

The poor li’l boy just couldn’t fathom a process where we don’t do a thing to influence the outcome, and still lose.

Lesson learnt, wouldn’t you say?