The lottery is not unique to Texas, of course. In fact, it was Massachusetts that first came to sell instant tickets back in 1974. Cantabrigians and the rest of the Commonwealth responded so well to this outlet for instant gratification that scratch-offs soon became a staple along with chewing gum and coffee. My experience in the Bay State reflects something different; there is little opportunity to play the numbers in Harvard Square. Maybe that’s more of an MIT thing.
My preferred campus haunt is instead the CVS, that retail giant borne circa 1963 in Lowell, MA. Sharing a place of origin with Kerouac and Milton Bradley, this Consumer Value Store speaks to us students’ own manner of free association and youthful games. In other words: the insulting juxtaposition of red solo cups and ping-pong balls; the aggressive Red Bull displays; the upstairs pharmacy that is too often closed when it really ought to be open. Meanwhile the students come and go, talking of Michel Foucault.
During freshman fall my roommate and I liked to go through those well-deserted streets at night and scour the store’s supply of a certain Hostess snack. Over time they seemed to increase in inventory according to our reliable patronage. Microeconomics in action. We do dare disturb the local universe. Weeknights melted from one food run and study break over a TV show to the next. Introductory classes and the desperate effort to justify our presence here: it’s disorienting.
Hostess is under new management since bankruptcy. Twinkies are back but they’re smaller and less calorific, or as Yeats would have it: “changed, changed utterly.” We are no longer those wandering freshman and certainly not the bright-eyed high schoolers who came in April 2010. The stakes were low and our world was more oyster than shell; it was acceptable to delay that quarrel with tomorrow’s p-set iin the endless hours of an all-nighter. We were faced, newly, with opportunity so boundless that it was nearly paralyzing. Our lotteries were of birth, college admission, and Eliot House. What becomes of fantasy and terrific luck when it’s finally in your lap?
Sometimes that somnolescent eternity watching reruns of “The Twilight Zone” is as distant from the inevitable dawn as the gap between your lotto numbers and the winning digits. We measured out our lives in Sno-balls™ and Cherry Coke. But how delicious it is, on an ether of marshmallow and coconut, sprawled on a cheap futon, to drift away in self-deception. To sleep, perchance to dream. Like another restless youth before the unanswered possibilities of a lottery ticket.
—Columnist David Grieder can be reached at Davidgrieder@college.harvard.edu.