Lead us not into Stupidity

I've been following with perverse fascination the story of a woman who tossed a one-million dollar winning scratch off ticket in the trash. Said ticket was then picked up by another woman who proceeded to turn it in and claim the money.

For reasons only lawyers can understand, a court has determined the winnings should be returned to the original ticket holder. That ruling is being appealed and this is my shocked face. Oo

I really don't care about the legal part of this mess that includes furious discussion over the difference between a trashcan and a ticket bin, or a machine that may or may not have been working properly, or what constitutes found property. The thing that amazes me is the woman who tossed away her millions said she did so because...drum roll...the scanning machine told her the ticket wasn't a winner.

I've played the lottery more than a few times, including those scratch off tickets. There is nothing difficult in the process of determining what is or is not a winning ticket. Like most others, the ticket in question was a simple match-the-numbers game. If your number at the top matches a number at the bottom, you win. Most of us have been doing variations on this game since preschool, so I am astounded that a person who had just chucked over ten or twenty bucks on the possibility of winning one million dollars chose to rely on a machine to give her the thumbs-up or down.

Oh! She insisted that she even scanned that ticket two or three times - like she always does - just to make sure it wasn't a winner before she threw it away. I can't decide if that makes the situation better or worse.

Dependence on technology is not a new phenomenon; just ask the people that follow their GPS over hills and streams and into the wilderness where they sit for days trying to get a cell signal so they can call someone to save them before they starve to death. It's insane that we are a society of people that continue to allow machines and computers to run our life. It's lack of personal accountability in all it's glory. We've gone beyond blaming another person for our losses and now we can point fingers at things that don't even have a pulse.

I don't care one way or another which of these women end up with that million dollars. God bless both of them for reminding me of how far we've all gone on the path of stupidity.

I guess that's about all I have to say on this. Before I post I'm going to hit spell-check so I have an excuse if anything is wrong, then I'm going to hop in my car and head down the road to pick up my daughter at a friend's house. I'm going to set my cruise control at 60 so if I get pulled over for speeding I can blame it on the car.

Peace ~ Dawn