It all adds up

Here I go again, climbing up on my high horse. It's not just because I keep seeing people write about the "guide" wire that held up a telephone "poll" that later fell into the "medium" strip along the highway, bringing "hoards" of spectators to the "seen." No one seems to care very much about grammar and spelling any more, so why I worry about it makes very little "cents."

But when people can't do simple arithmetic, then we have a problem. The cashier at the U-Bought-It has to pull out a pocket calculator to subtract 19 cents from $5.48. (And still comes up with $382.56). You tell a produce guy that you want half a dozen packs of 6 onion sets, and he wonders how many that will be. And who can forget the deli clerk at PriceRite who, when I ordered "three quarters of a pound of roast beef," handed me three 1/4-lb packages of roast beef.

If there is one thing that brings America together, it's how we invest a few dollars and a lot of hopes and dreams in the powerball lottery, dreaming and scheming of how we will spend our fortune when we win it.  Or there is always the kind-hearted person who figures out how the lottery money could best serve the public at large.  Let's divvy it up among EVERYONE in the country!  


Hmmm...let's see...$1.3 billion divided by 300 million = $4.33 million for each person? Uh. I don't think so. It's $4.33 per person, which is not even enough to buy a five-dollar footlong sub which is not a foot long.

I don't know who Philipe Andolini is, and I don't even know if he is responsible for this mixup.  I do know that for your lottery money, you get to dream of being Oprah-rich and buying 127 Rolls-Royce cars to put one in front of your 127 mansions, and that seems to be enough.  

Having everyone in this country suddenly be a millionaire would mean a nation full of people like Ethan Couch.

But wouldn't it be great if his middle name were "Allen"?