It just wouldn’t be a Tuesday if I couldn’t turn a relatively trivial matter into a major personal dilemma wrought with social and moral implications!

Our office Secret Santa is tomorrow afternoon. When signing up to participate, people had to include several gift ideas that they would like. Fair enough, and saves people from having to deal with yet another Starbucks holiday mug. Our gift exchange only has a $15 limit – we are all poor – and names were drawn out of hat, so away we go. Should be simple. Buy a gift based on the person’s suggestions and is within the dollar limit, and the festivities will practically create themselves.

Naturally, I have to turn this entire thing into a massive drama bomb: the person I picked has requested $15 worth of lottery tickets.

I hate lottery tickets. I don’t have issues with gambling or games of chance or this particular person, but I HATE lottery tickets. My mother abused them (and through the tickets, me) while I was growing up, and to this day the lottery and all things associated with it fill me with rage. Ed doesn’t bother telling me when he buys the occasional ticket, I sneer at people standing in line to get their bi-weekly fix, and the entire thing just makes me incredibly cranky all over. I want to punch Shirley Jackson. The music that the lotto machines play makes me sick to my stomach. I have a difficult time not strangling my mother when she tells me long involved stories about how close her numbers were. I resent the fuck out of being asked to “pray to daddy so we hit the big one” in every conversation I have with her. People who animatedly and repeatedly discuss what they would do if they won the lottery disgust me. I HATE LOTTERIES.

The whole thing is fucking ridiculous, and now I’m being forced to buy a whole crapload of tickets as a “gift”. This makes me angry and resentful. It does not fill me with holiday cheer; it reminds me that lottery numbers were more important to my mother than I was for many, many years and it brings back a flood of very bad memories. I regret taking part in the gift exchange if this is my only option, and it’s too late to do anything about it now.

Don’t wanna.

Fuck the lottery.