The other day someone I know was searching for a lottery ticket he misplaced to check it to see if it was a winner, and it reminded me of an old episode of a TV show I had seen.
The show was called Just Shoot Me and the story line was that there was a boss who gave his assistant money every week to play the boss' numbers in the lottery. The assistant knew the chance of winning was low, so instead of buying a lottery ticket, he would buy candy for himself. Of course, the numbers did come in and the boss came looking for his money.
We Schenectadians are like that boss, because we give our money out for something that has a chance of a payout in the future, but unlike the boss, we did not pick the numbers, and we just take the assistant's word for it that we are winning, and we never even demand to see tangible results.
I've been in offices where people pooled their money for the lottery when there was a big prize, and sometimes there would be a smaller amount won, and everyone would agree to put the money toward future drawings, but they at least could see what numbers they had, and how much they won.
Schenectady has always been a big gambling city. How popular would the numbers ever have become if they people who played it never got the payout? Would you buy a raffle ticket if the prizes kept showing up in the sponsor's house?
We're like the guy who doesn't quite have the money for his rent, so he takes a trip to Atlantic City. Except, we did have the rent money, we just blew it paying for everybody else's benefit.