You Can't Scratch Off at the Front Counter

Recently the state of Arkansas added a state lottery to it's secret list of "things we can do to make our good citizens act like idiots in public". Now I think it's good that our education system is supposed to benefit from this. And I think it's good that, real soon, we'll get to see some half witted knuckle dragger from Possum Grape talk about what he's gonna do with his winnings. "I'm gon' have my lifetime disability check I git from the railroad for injuring my thumbnail, airdropped to my house every month by a Blackhawk Helicopter!!! Then, I'm gon' put spinners on every tractor in this county!!!! Cowboy UP mutherfucker!!!!" What I have the most problem with is the outright rudeness of a lot of people when the possibility of never having to work another day in their life is dangled in front of their noses like a dope sprinkled carrot (they're good for getting really good eyesight really fast!!!). I've never seen more people cut in line than at a gas station with a giant box of scratch tickets sitting on the counter. People are so obsessed with WINNING that they're willing to act like complete jerk offs with no tact whatsoever. "Forget diapers and baby wipes!!! I don't want cash. Jest give me 20 more $1 scratch offs. Mama's gonna let it ride!!!" Not to say that gas stations are the most pleasant places to be anyway. But now they're starting to resemble something not unlike a crowded methadone clinic. Doped out zombies hangin at the "win a bunch of quarters by losing a bunch of quarters not gambling machine", fumbling for chance to SCRATCH another one. SCRATCH another one. SCRATCH another one. It itches!!! So SCRATCH another one. And when they're out of change you can always tell from their gray fingernails; caked up with whatever flaky crap they use to lure you to the illusion of another temporary victory. SCRATCH another one. I heard a gas station attendant reprimand a jonesin' scratcher the other day. "You can't scratch off at the front counter!! Go to the back counter to scratch off!!" They're like drug dealers now! "You can't push off in my living room, dude. My girlfriend is bringing her kids home soon. Go to the bathroom!!!" I'm sorry if I'm coming off overly bitter and mean. But it just sucks to see people get lured into a new wave of "fix-it-quickedness". Compromise everything for the likely odds of nothing. We're losing one of the things a lot of people admire about the south. I can't pinpoint what that thing is but it's what makes us open doors for people and let them go first in line. It's what makes us INSIST that the guy to the left of us at an intersection go first. Even though the guy on the right has the right of way. And it's what makes us wave at that guy like we know him, even though we've probably never seen him before. Charm? Consideration? Grace? I don't know. We're just cool like that. I love it here. And I love being from here, regardless of the crap I get from people when I'm in another region of the country. "In the South, the breeze blows softer...neighbors are friendlier, nosier, and more talkative. (By contrast with the Yankee, the Southerner never uses one word when ten or twenty will do)...This is a different place. Our way of thinking is different, as are our ways of seeing, laughing, singing, eating, meeting and parting. Our walk is different, as the old song goes, our talk and our names. Nothing about us is quite the same as in the country to the north and west. What we carry in our memories is different too, and that may explain everything else." --Charles Kuralt in "Southerners: Portrait of a People" But you lotto whores are fucking it up and making us look bad!! So if quick money is what you want, go back to the truck stop parking lot and "let it ride"!!!