Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003202729
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
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.
\ Some people are born wealthy. Some people achieve wealth. The rest play the lottery.
Ben Beagle occupies a category all his own. He is neither wealthy, on his way to becoming wealthy nor a lottery player.
He's just complaining.
This world would be a better place and Radford would be, too, if Ben would pursue wealth a bit more vigorously.
Without riches, vast fruited plains littered with topics worthy of whining about spread out before Ben Beagle like so many paper clips before a magnet.
Every time another soul wins a lottery mega-prize, Ben sets to daydreaming. Forty times already, I have heard the script of how Ben marches into the editor's office to abruptly and loudly resign. It is not pleasant and it is not likely to happen soon.
Hey, don't get me wrong.
Ben is a legend, I recognize that. Ben is also a monstrous pain in the butt. I recognize that, too.
Beagle's chances of being born to wealth are shot. He grew up shoe-less in the Virginia hills, a bonsai Benny Beagle looting neighbors' apple trees.
In his current frame of mind, he's not likely to moonlight to achieve richness.
That leaves one alternative: Ben must play the lottery. He's duped himself into thinking he could win the big one, though of course he can't. He uses the lottery as a crutch - unwilling to work, unable to change history, he can dream and complain.
And so I have devised this scheme aimed at sweeping Ben's complainer's feet out from under him.
I want him to see for himself that the lottery is no way out.
Ben does not recognize the lottery for the parasite that it is. He does not see the lottery as the pounding rainstorm over the bare and sloping soil, eroding gullies in the mountain of basic human decency.
In the charming and boyish way that Ben has parlayed chronic complaining into a career, he sees the lottery as a chance to strike it rich.
Ben is wrong. His chances of being conked in the head by a bag of coins plummeting from the open cargo hold of a passing Wells Fargo jet are far better than his chances of collecting a single dollar from the lottery.
Alas, Ben is too cheap to try it on his own.
But Ben is being forced now to put up or shut up.
The only way we could persuade him to participate was to give him $100 from this newspaper - money that had been set aside to improve your home delivery - and let him play the lottery until it is all gone.
It shouldn't take long.
I'll be doing the same thing, just to reinforce the inevitable finding that the lottery is nothing more than a gargantuan waste of money. My $100 comes from the newspaper, too, but if I have my way it will be deducted from my paycheck. I have been emphatic in negotiating the point: It would be wrong to penalize our readers and patrons for this folly.
We can but hope that when this is all over, when all of our money is gone, Ben will have learned a valuable lesson.
If it's money he wants, he'll have to work for it.
Kim Blasingame and Barbi Bentley - the women about whom Ben fantasizes so frequently - aren't drawn to poor working stiffs. They're attracted by the scent of money, Ben.
But the lottery doesn't smell like money. It smells like a rat.
You'll find out.
by CNB