Good Luck

I fell into line behind a round, upper middle-aged woman at the customer service counter. She’d been there a few minutes already.
“The first one worked?” she asked the cashier.
“Mmhmm.” Lotto tickets are like scantrons or other multiple choice answer forms you use in school where you fill in little bubbles for the numbers you want and then someone feeds the form through a machine that uses a technology called Optical Mark Recognition to convert your written choices into digital data that is then recorded and transferred back to you via a receipt for you to look at when the winning combination of digits is announced. The second ticket wasn’t working. “Give me a minute here.”
The cashier continued periodically feeding the leading edge of the ticket into the scanner portion of the Lotto machine and the machine would take it in an eighth or even a quarter of an inch sometimes and then push it back out. Then she would try to straighten it, or blow it off -- scanning for errant spots or blemishes -- and give it to the machine again with the same result. She got another ticket and placed it underneath the actual ticket, doubling the thickness of the offering and tried that. Nothing. The woman in front of me began to seem uncomfortable with the delay.
“Maybe you weren’t supposed to play those numbers,” I said.
“That’s how I look at it,” she turned and looked at me. “I think you may be right.” She turned back to the counter as the machine pushed the ticket out again. “That’s ok,” she said, “let’s just void it -- I’ll just fill in another.” She moved to the left slightly so I could move up in line.
“How can I help you?” the cashier asked as she was putting away the extra ticket and the various implements she’d employed in her attempts of the last moments.
“I’ll take some Top rolling tobacco please.”
She retrieved her keys from under the counter and turned to the case with the cigarettes and Swisher Sweets cigars and the Nicorette gum and the lighters and gave the lock a try. And then she gave another key a try.

“You know it’s funny how everything is connected,” the middle-aged woman smiled at me. “If I go in to play the lottery and everything doesn’t go just right, I don’t even bother.”

“You have to be feeling it huh?”
“Yeah, I’ve just learned that it’s not going to work out if everything isn’t right.”

The cashier finally finished struggling with the lock and called across the walkway to a nearby check stand, “Hey Tessa, do you have a key to the case?”

“Sure, give me a minute.”

To the Lotto lady next to me: “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to smoke tonight,” I smiled.

“Maybe you’re right!”

Tessa brought the key and I paid for my tobacco and started to go as the Lotto lady handed her new ticket to the cashier.

“Good luck to you young man.”

“Thanks. Good luck to you too.”