Tales from Rural Maine: Lucky ME

One of the particular quirks of being me--and, consequently, also of being a person in the world who encounters me--is that while I groove on some aspects of society really well, I more often function like I'm from another place. Like, perhaps I used to be a mermaid. Or maybe I'm from some crazy place like Bohemia, except I don't really seem to have an accent.

Mostly I "pass" in (rural) American society by smiling a lot and asking questions with a sincere curiosity and warmth. It also helps that 9 out of 10 people here know I'm from here, or they know I teach someone they love yoga here, so they endow me with a certain amount of cred right out of the gate. This will often buy me enough time to learn what I need to learn before they fully cotton on to my cluelessness and get fed up.

Today, the kind folks at Tozier's Market in Bucksport had the sort of encounter I'm talking about.

A forty-something-year-old woman walks in the door, puts a paper on the counter and then says, cheerfully and with an almost childlike enthusiasm, "I'd like a lottery ticket, please! How does that work?"

The cashier sized me up and I don't know if she is just kind in her heart or if she made a decision to be kind right then--I think both--but she ever so graciously began at the beginning, which was just what I was hoping for.

"Do you want one of these? [pointing to the logos for some lotteries] Or one of these, that you scratch? [gesturing to the scratch tickets]"

Her assessment that I might not know the difference between a scratch ticket and a lottery ticket was incorrect, but I felt grateful that she did perceive that I knew next to nothing about what I was trying to do.

Me: "Wow! Who knew there were so many? I would like the kind that they draw numbers for? That kind. Not the scratch...How does that go?"

"Well, tonight you have Magic Number Balls [or something, I can't remember what she really said] and Lucky Winners [or something else; I really can't remember what the various lotteries are called. There really are a lot of them!]."

Me: "That sounds great! How much do they cost?"

"Well...this one is one dollar and that one is two dollars."

Me, brightly: "I'll take the one for one dollar, please."

As the clerk prints me a ticket, she explains: "The drawing will be tonight."

Me: "Okay! Exciting. So is that something that will be in the TV?"

By this point, her colleague had come over and they were both so sweetly observing me, like they couldn't quite get a handle on why I don't know anything about lotteries. Or maybe even TV.

The other clerk said, "Well...I think it may happen right before the evening news...?" And she sort of paused, as if to see if I understood what evening news was. I nodded. "Or, you can call the store and the clerk here will tell you the winning number...Or you can check...online..." And with the online bit, she trailed off. I think she thought she'd lose me there. Little does she know that what I lack in lottery know-how I more than make up in online know-how!

"Online! Perfect. Thank you!"

The first clerk rang me up and said: "One winning lottery ticket. That'll be $1.79."

Me, being funny: "Do I have to pay extra for a winning one?"

Clerk: Laughs. "Nope. It's included."

I'm not sure it's possible to convey the air of sweet confusion about the whole thing. It was utterly inconceivable to the women serving me that a grown adult who seemed to have her wits about her and definitely seemed sober would walk into a convenience store and not have any comprehension about how lotteries work. I must have seemed like an idiot. And they were SO nice about it. I love kind people, I really, really do.

When I got out to my car, I realized in my excitement about buying a lottery ticket, I'd forgotten something I went there for, so I went back in just as they were saying to a third colleague, "No! I don't think she'd ever bought a lottery ticket before!" Total bafflement reigned. It was all so charming.

They were surprised to see me, but I let them know with my smile and my body language that I know it seems funny that I don't know about lottery tickets. We all laughed--I totally got why it was odd.

And realizing I wasn't insulted--we were all on the same page--they asked the burning question, "Have you really never bought a lottery ticket?"

I explained how I'd bought a MegaBucks on my 18th birthday, but that was a really long time ago, and since then I'd bought a couple over the years as gifts for people, but it was always so many years apart and I never quite did understand how any of it worked or what it all cost or how you check the numbers or which one is best or how often they have drawings or any of that stuff. Like many things in life, my conscious awareness ended in 1990. I'm also always surprised when a first-class postage stamp isn't 25 cents.

I left really hoping she did sell me a winning lottery ticket. Wouldn't that be great?  I could buy those clerks a present--and also in all the press conferences, I could tell the story about how one day, I just felt lucky and decided to ask someone how to buy a lottery ticket and they were so nice to me and then we won! 

I bet that story would be in the TV...and also online...!