Poor Ivory Mitchell.
After buying lottery scratch-off
tickets since Richard Nixon's second term, he thought he'd finally hit the
jackpot. After buying five of the things July 20th, two
indicated he had won $1,000. Nice payoff after forty-two years of
playing, isn't it?
But wait. The agency that runs the Wisconsin
lottery is claiming that the tickets are defective. Misprints that
aren't worth the cardboard they're printed on. In a show of bureaucratic benevolence, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue has offered
to reimburse Mr. Mitchell the ten-bucks it cost him to be a kinda sorta but-not-quite winner.
Ivory Mitchell is a sixty-four year-old
retired welder who undergoes dialysis and is living off of
disability, and who had planned to use the winnings to repair his
roof, gutters and a fence.
It might just be me, but wouldn't it be
cool if some combination of the Wisconsin lottery and the vendor who
supposedly misprinted the tickets somehow managed to come up with the
two-grand that would make such a difference at one end and barely
register at the other?
I'm guessing that after forty-two years
of purchases, all concerned have turned a very tidy profit on Mr. Mitchell.
Just a thought.
