The impossible possible dream

Why do I buy scratch tickets? It's the philosophy, stupid

by Chris Wright

One can describe the content of a dream in much the same terms as one describes the view from a window. . . .

-- The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy

OVER THE PAST year or so, I have established a little personal ritual: I go into my local convenience store, buy a cup of coffee and a five-dollar scratch ticket, and retire to the back room to smoke a cigarette and scratch. Sometimes I win a few dollars. Once I won a thousand and nearly gagged on my large regular. More often than not, however, I come away with little more than a sore throat and fingertips stained silver-black with the mysterious (toxic?) material used to coat the cards.

"A waste of money," say my friends.

"You're an idiot," says my dad.

FEEL THE EXCITEMENT, says the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission.

To some extent, they all have a point. The odds of hitting it big on a scratch ticket are not good. The probability of winning a $1 million jackpot on a recent five-dollar scratcher is one in 2,016,000. Which doesn't sound so bad until I figure out what that really means: on average, I'd have to spend $10 million to come up with a $1 million ticket. I've probably got a better chance of Cher calling me on the phone to ask for a date.

SO WHY do I do it? "Because you're an idiot," says my ever-reliable dad.

What he and other lottery skeptics fail to grasp, though, is that it's not the probability of winning the jackpot that's important, it's the possibility. A philosopher might put it this way: the appeal of scratch tickets has more to do with potentiality than actuality.

Let me explain.

In essence, there's very little difference -- give or take a few creature comforts -- between lounging around at home and languishing in a prison cell. You're probably going to sit around your living room tonight, just like you'd sit around the prison cell. What really distinguishes the two can be boiled down to a single word: potential. Even if you don't wander out of the house, even if you are certain you won't go outside, the possibility is there. Your potential horizons include going outside. Which is not, of course, the case in prison.

The principle behind the scratch ticket is the same. I may never win a jackpot -- in fact, I can be fairly certain I won't -- but every time I buy a ticket, my potential horizons include a million bucks, and all the benefits a million bucks would bring me: esteem, peace of mind, maybe even a date with Cher.

In contrast, the potential horizons of a five-dollar bill are pretty much fixed: a sandwich, a video rental, a beer. I might not be enriched by buying a scratch ticket, and in a few minutes I'll still be sitting here in this smoky little scratching parlor, but my mind is already wandering down Park Avenue, stopping off at the Four Seasons for lunch, ordering appetizers and dessert.

That's my theory, anyway. I call it the phenomenology of scratch.

IN THE 1930s, the German philosopher Edmund Husserl introduced phenomenology to the world with this battle cry: "To the things themselves." A phenomenology site on the Internet provides a useful definition: "[A] 20th-century philosophical movement dedicated to describing the structures of experience as they present themselves to consciousness, without recourse to theory, deduction, or assumptions from other disciplines such as the natural sciences."

Logic, reason, and past experience mean nothing when I sit down with my scratch ticket. Only the Thing Itself matters: the ticket, which presents itself to my consciousness as a window into a brighter, better world.

Take the name of the game, "Instant Millions," written in large, elaborate type, dwarfing a little "$5" logo to its left. Below this a scroll unfurls: 1,335 PRIZES FROM $2,500 TO $1,000,000! OVER $114,100,000 IN CASH PRIZES! In the top corner is a starburst proclaiming, 15 INSTANT PRIZES OF $1,000,000!

We aren't supposed to remember that these 15 prizes are buried somewhere among 30,240,000 Instant Millions tickets. Nor even that these tickets must pass through the sticky fingers of lottery employees, some of whom have recently been caught scanning bundles of tickets in search of the big winners. Instead, we must perform, as Husserl put it, a "bracketing of existence" -- we divorce the ticket from the stuff of common sense.

Which is precisely what I do every morning when I sit down and start scratching.

"Idiot," says my . . . Oh, shut up.

ALL SERIOUS scratchers have their own mode of scratching. Some scratch the prizes first; some scratch in arabesque designs; some just bulldoze through one card and move on to the next. Here's my routine: first I scratch the bottom two rows of numbers -- "Your Numbers," the ticket calls them, as though I had any choice in the matter: 8 . . . 10 . . . 4 . . . 12 . . . 6 . . . 18 . . . 14 . . . 9 . . . 1 . . . 5.

I stare at these for a few moments, trying to discern some pattern, some sign that the ticket's a good one. Next I meticulously scratch each of the three Winning Numbers. If any of the ticket's Winning Numbers match my numbers, I've won something.

The first Winning Number (ha!) is a 19. No luck. The next number is an 11. Nope. The third number is a 12. Winner! Now all I have to do is scratch a bit more to reveal how much I've won. Before I do this I light another cigarette. This moment should last as long as possible.

What would I do with a million bucks? I'd buy the usuals: car, house, Jacuzzi. I would travel. I would spend a year in a cloister, writing the great American novel. In the few moments before I reveal my prize, my horizons include Cairo and the New York Times bestseller list. Whether I ever get these things or not, for a few moments my life is awash in glittering possibility. Hopelessness has been abandoned.

This might sound foolish, but the principles involved are closely related to religious belief and the persistence of religion in the modern world. With every new scientific discovery, our place in the universe is reaffirmed, and the concept of divinity -- and everlasting life -- is undermined. Yet, despite the evidence, people cling to their religions, and they do so for a good reason: the very possibility of everlasting life mitigates the hopelessness of existence, the specter of inevitable death. In this sense, religious believers bracket existence in much the same way that scratchers do. Faith necessarily stands outside of everyday experience.

When you look at it in these terms, it makes sense that the lottery appeals to the indigent, people in dead-end jobs, people for whom vast possibility is otherwise unthinkable. Which is why, I'm sure, people call me a loser for playing, and why I feel a little spasm of shame when I am spotted stocking up on tickets. I do have other possibilities in my life, and still I play. Does this suggest some underlying sense of inadequacy? Probably. But more than this, I think, there is something irresistible about divorcing oneself from reason and giving oneself over to faith -- feeling potential rather than plotting it out.

TIME TO reveal my prize. Faithfully, I scratch -- slowly, painstakingly, like an archaeologist scraping the ground to unearth the wing bone of a delicate bird. I start to the right of the prize box, allowing room for the parade of zeros. I scratch and nick the surface, moving toward the center of the box. In a few seconds, the million is no longer a possibility, but the thousand is, then the $500 or $200 or $100, then the $10. My horizons narrow with the leftward motion of the coin.

Finally, there it is: $5 -- or, in the parlance of the scratcher, five lousy stinking bucks. I'm back to the tuna melt, Jackie Chan, or the Harpoon IPA. So I do the only sensible thing under the circumstances. I buy another ticket.

No, no, no, no, no. . . . It's a loser. So I play again, gathering an inevitable, desperate momentum. I still want to win the million, but more than this I want my horizons to open up again. I want my mind to wander once more through the aisles of Armani and Bruno Magli. Herein lies the engine of addiction: the reluctance to abandon possibility.

Another. Another.

When I started scratching today, I had 50 bucks in my pocket, and my potential horizons included going out on the town. Now even that horizon is closed: I'm down to a few fives. To hell with the million; I'll settle for my 50 bucks back.

Another.

And so it is that I reach the most terrible place a gambler can be: playing catch-up. I'm no longer hoping to expand my horizons, but simply to restore them. Another. As I reveal the so-called Winning Numbers -- scratch . . . scratch . . . scratch -- possibility slams itself shut. Like a window. Like the door of a prison cell. Then there is nothing but the traffic outside, the stairs up to my office, the parade of days.

I trudge out of the convenience store, like I do every morning, feeling bad but not terrible, not hopeless.

After all, there's always tomorrow.

Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.