Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003202728
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For the next two weeks, the two Roanoke Times & World-News columnists will pit their luck against each other in the Virginia Lottery, playing any game they want, anywhere lottery tickets are sold.
Beagle and Shamy will risk only their original $100. They will set aside any winnings, and they will be donated to the Mill Mountain Zoo's Tiger Fund, for Ruby the Siberian Tiger.
Those are the only rules.
Beagle and Shamy will chronicle their lottery luck in the newspaper for the next two Sundays, March 25 and April 1.
May the better man win.
\ I would like to make it perfectly clear that my wife wears a plain cloth coat and I don't want to play the lottery.
It's not that I don't like the lottery.
Indeed, Paula Otto, the public information person for this activity, has the kind of voice Kim Basinger should live so long to have.
(I am also, I assure you, not a sexist. Any woman will tell you that I am just the most sensitive man you would want to meet.)
I do not play the lottery because I am afraid of numbers, but now, on account of this Ed Shamy churn-head, I am going to have to play. Just to get this all straight, this was Shamy's idea.
I was afraid of numbers before Shamy or Paula were born but that doesn't mean anything. Noooooooo. Beagle, they say, you will play the lottery.
I'll tell Paula one thing, though, if I win the jackpot I'm not going to pose for a picture with one of those big, phony checks.
I'll tell Shamy and all these editors another thing. If I win the jackpot, they won't have Old Bennie to kick around anymore.
I'll leave the address of the condo in the Caribbean so you'll know where to send the retirement checks.
Or I may just stay around here. You know. Buy Bent Mountain and hire somebody to cut the grass in front of this castle on Bottom Creek.
Actually, I don't expect to win anything.
I have never won anything - with the exception of the time I was covering a Ruritan Club dinner and won a carpenter's level as a door prize.
I had to give it to my brother-in-law because of ethical considerations, but it was a heady moment when they drew my numbers.
But that was just three numbers. Listen, you play Lotto in this state and you've got to fool with six numbers. Not to mention Pick-3, in which you get involved with three more numbers.
That means if I played a single Lotto card and a single Pick-3 card the same day, I'd have to put up with nine numbers.
I don't like to think about playing five Lotto and Pick-3 cards at the same time.
I told Shamy and the editors. I told them not to be surprised when I lose control and run screaming out of a 7-Eleven store or something like that.
But you know how editors are. They just smiled cruelly and asked me if I was being an obstructionist and things like that.
I told them that I could use the hundred bucks they're blowing on the lottery to buy an industrial-strength pair of sneakers for my lunchtime walk. I said the walking was killing my feet.
They said that happens when you're old enough to remember who Dame May Whitty was. They also mentioned early retirement.
OK. So they want me to play all those instant cards that you have to scratch to see if you've won.
Although Paula has done a lot to teach me about these games, they do have numbers in them and I am afraid of them.
Not only that, it makes me self-conscious to scratch those cards in public. If it's all right with the editors, I'll do it in the privacy of my own office.
I can see me scratching these cards in public and some bimbo coming in and asking, "So, who's the old guy scratching the cards?"
But, we Beagles have a long-standing, almost-genetic, sense of duty and I will do mine.
Let me see now, that's three numbers for Pick-3 and six numbers for Lotto.
Hey, Paula. One more time. How do you play that television scratch-off game?
by CNB