My little nest of vipers excitedly exclaimed this morning that she'd 'won' the lottery. I must admit, against my better judgement, to getting a tad excited. My initial excitement faded somewhat with her announcement that she had four numbers which, upon checking, amounted to one hundred and fifty-some pounds. This dampened my excitement somewhat but didn't dampen hers one iota and she continued to declare herself a winner.
I thought this may be a good time to explain the subtle differences between winning, breaking even and losing. {Not loosing!}
I commenced with a verbal explanation that, for this instance, she'd won but in the greater scheme of things, lottery wise, over the years, she was a loser.
This didn't seem to register so I moved from talking to diagrams using pen and paper. Not a hint of understanding there so I moved upwards to an A4 pad. Nope. Nothing. So ever onwards and upwards to the use of a flip-chart with thick-tipped multi-coloured marker pens. Still seeing no shift in her winning belief I quickly put together a three hour Power Point presentation, complete with cartoon characters and catchy music. Zero signs of comprehension as to the relationship between money spent on tickets over time verses 'winnings'.
After all that, and noting she was still looking at her ticket and smiling, I threw in the towel and retreated to my private corner of the sofa to seek solace in some old sounds leaving her with happy thoughts of a super day of pound shop shopping. Could there be additions to her colander collection on the cards?
I found myself back in the early nineteen sixties daba-dab-adabing along to a bit o' Bach with the Swingle Singers which is a very pleasant way to relax of a Sunday evening don't ya thunk?
Quote; Roger Jones.
“I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged.”
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