Oo, Oo, Oo

There's a new lottery in Massachusetts. It's called the Billion Dollar Blockbuster. It's a scratch ticket, and it costs twenty dollars, which is absurd. But they say it has the best odds ever (which I don't know what that means, but anyway), and you have a chance of winning up to ten million dollars -- plus, everybody who wins anything at all gets entered in a second-chance sweepstakes that pays one lucky bastard a million dollars a year for LIFE (guaranteed at least twenty mil to your survivors if you go all Alanis and die the next day).

Now, I know I said I hate the gamblers. But I also said my husband is one. He lusts after scratch tickets like I do the Dirty Jobs guy (we know this about each other, it's okay). We've been hearing about this new game on the radio all week, and today he got paid for the first time since the ides of August.

So in the car on the way home tonight I asked him: "Are you going to buy one of those new twenty-dollar tickets?"

"One," he said. "I'm going to buy one. Twenty dollars is too much for a scratch ticket. I can win just fine for less than that. But yeah, I'm going to buy one. Why?"

"Well -- and understand I'm not telling you to buy one, or asking you to do so -- but if you are going to buy one of them... would you please bring it home and scratch it with me, your lovely wife, instead of scratching it with the boys up at the pub?"

Partly, I want to be there if he wins ten million dollars -- which is not entirely unlikely, considering that he's won a bunch before -- but mostly, even if he wins a lesser amount, I don't want him whooping it up at the place where he's been known to get a little what-did-I-do-last-night.

He agreed.

Now, as you know, Chuck (TFT) has been acting up lately. He doesn't sometimes want to start. So we've fallen into a routine where I pick Johnny up at work and we run all necessary errands as a team: I drive to all the necessary places, and I stay in the parking lot with the engine running while Himself goes in and buys the chit.

Johnny got out of work early this afternoon, and the agenda was: bank, Tedeschi's (a convenience store like 7-11), packie (for IPA), then dropping Johnny at the pub, then I'd take my own sorry self home because he got out early so there's still time left for me to get more work done and get some more chit in the mail.

But when Johnny came out of Tedeschi's, he flipped me this piece of multi-colored cardstock and said "There you go. Don't scratch it till I get there."

Oh my.

So now he's up at the pub, and I'm sitting here with this twenty-dollar -- possibly ten-million-dollar -- scratch ticket, which is calling for me from the other room (I put it up on a high shelf, so I would not be tempted, but let's not kid ourselves: I put it there, I can get it down).

I'm not going to do it. I'm not. He would oh-my-god so freaking kill me. If I scratched it, I would have to go and buy another one even if this one was the one.

But he'd better get home soon. If he doesn't, I know I'm going to grab the damn ticket and try to drive up to the pub. If I do, and if Chuck (TFT) should then refuse to start, I can't be held responsible for what happens next.