We live in a society where money is viewed as the answer to all of our problems. So it’s no surprise that we tend to get excited when the lottery gets up to $640 million dollars – hey, it could be you. I mean it won’t , but it could have been at some point. Of course, everyone knows that it’s not really how it works – we all know about the lottery winners that went bankrupt. We’ve all seen the studies that show that money is irrelevant to happiness and that lottery winners are so unprepared for the stresses of riches that they’re often miserable and lose all of their friends.
That’s all well and good, but I’m going to tell you something that you don’t know — something that will schock you. I’m going to tell you about the dark side of losing the lottery.
The first interview we at Nothing Will Be Alright conducted was with Roger Halifax, a 52 year-old welder from Terra Haute, IN.
NWBAR: So Roger, we’ve reach out to literally dozens of people who’ve lost the lotteries in the past, but they’ve all been hesitant to come forward. What inspired you to speak out.
Roger: Well I mean there’s a certain sense of shame in being unhappy despite losing the lottery — I mean, you see all those people who won it and went bankrupt and had their siblings hiring hits on them and, you know, couldn’t figure out their tax returns, and you think, “well, my problems don’t really matter compared to that.” But they do, and that’s what I want people to know.
NWBAR: How did you feed when you first found out you’d lost the lottery?
Roger: Relieved. Grateful. Ecstatic. My wife Sandy screamed when she heard the news. “I’m not going to extort you for money and [our daughter] Sally won’t develop a raging cocaine addiction that will end with the three of us bleeding on the ground in Jaurez!” was all I could hear on the phone.
NWBAR: Those were her exact words?
Roger: Over and over. I remember her coming home and hugging me very tightly. When she kissed Sally goodnight , she told her, “someday, if you work hard, you can go to school anywhere.”
NWBAR: Anywhere?
Roger: That’s what Sally asked. “Yes, anywhere,” she replied. “Even Duke.”
NWBAR: So what’s the issue? It seems like everything was going great for you.
Roger: Well, it was a heady time for the first year or so, I have to admit. But then Sandy lost her job and we started running into money problems.
NWBAR: Uh oh.
Roger: Yeah, it turned out she had operable cancer. The most operable there is… only we didn’t have any money. I remember thinking to myself, maybe this losing lottery ticket wasn’t a blessing. Maybe it was just a curse. And I would say that to my wife, say, “Sometimes I wish we hadn’t lost the lottery at all.” And she would smile and say, “Oh Roger.”
NWBAR: I’m very sorry.
Roger: Then there were the times I would hear her screaming because the cancer was eating away at her body in the most painful way imaginable. The nurses would come and give her morphine, and then the doctor would come and clap the nurses because morphine was only for patients who could pay. “No painkillers! Only patientkillers!” he would shout. And then he’d take a stab at my wife with a scalpel and I’d have to pull him off.
NWBAR: Jesus, that’s awful.
Roger: And then she got into this dementia where she would forget that she was sick and every morning she’d wake up and try to walk and couldn’t. Then we’d have to explain to her all over again how she was going to die soon. And then she would cry for a while, and then throw things, and then they’d have to sedate her and she’d pass out until the next day when we had to do it all again.
NWBAR: Couldn’t you just not tell her one morning?
Roger: No, our insurance didn’t cover denial. The doctor was very insistent.
Roger broke down and began sobbing. I offered him a tissue and he blew his nose, gathering his strength for what he had to say next.
NWBAR: That’s awful. I’m so sorry.
Roger: After that, Sally got really quiet and hardly did anything but study. Said she would do anything to go to Duke since it was what mommy wanted. She was valedictorian of her school and got a 2400 SAT, but…
NWBAR: But what?
Roger: There were over three thousand buildings donated that year.
NWBAR: I didn’t realize she was applying in The Year of the Valley of Steel.
Roger: Yeah, she didn’t stand a chance.
NWBAR: What’s she doing now?
Roger: Well you know the Miller Center inside of the Freidman Dome?
NWBAR: It’s a big campus. There are a lot of buildings inside other buildings.
Roger: Right, but it’s probably the neighborhood of Shapiro that you know the best. She had to go to Western North Carolina State University of Smart Poor Kids Who Lose Their Scholarships, and it turns out the name isn’t ironic. Around junior year she had to start tutoring the heir to that fortune just to make ends meet. They, uh, became romantically involved… and one night they were out drinking and drove the car into the lake. He got out fine, she drowned.
NWBAR: That’s terrible.
Roger: The jurors were all his father’s handpicked men. They found him not guilty and voted him CFO. Then he fired them all.
NWBAR: …so, uh… Jesus.
Roger: Yeah I’ve had pretty much the worse life in existence.
NWBAR: What would you say is the lesson to all of this.
Roger: There are some things that money can’t buy. It can, however, buy chemotherapy and keep your daughter from having to prostitute herself to someone who won’t save her from the car because he doesn’t want to get his blazer wet. So don’t do what I did – please, win the lottery.
