For the poor, buying a lottery ticket is like buying a little piece of hope.
Many people want to complain that we waste our money on lottery tickets but they don’t understand what that ticket represents. For that dollar we get hope. We get a few minutes to forget about our problems and dream about what life might be like if we weren’t poor.
For the days and hours leading up to the numbers being called we get to talk about what we would do if we won.
We get to fantasize about what it would be like if we could pay all our bills and have some money to send our kids to college. We talk about all the money we would donate to the organizations that help us. We talk about giving money to the local food pantry and the shelter to help people like us. We talk about buying uniforms for our kids little league team. We talk about buying a house and a car, not just for ourselves but for our friends and family.
As the jackpot increases, we talk about what it would be like to have enough money to go out to eat, to take a vacation, to pay for our kids prom dress or school field trip. We dream of a life without hunger. We dream of a life where we can go to a doctor or a dentist, not fear eviction, and eat fresh vegetables. We dream of a life where we are treated with respect and dignity not looked down upon because we live in public housing or use food stamps. We dream.
When the numbers are called we hope. We hope its our turn to provide a good life for our families. We hope our numbers are called. Our numbers ….. our children’s birth dates, our anniversaries, our address, our lucky numbers. The numbers that stand between us being a case number, a statistic, a “poor person” and life.
After the disappointment of not hearing our numbers, we go out the next day and buy another piece of hope because that’s all we have.
