Everything about it has a rhythm: the lists of numbers, the scratchy thumping of the… Everything about it has a rhythm: the lists of numbers, the scratchy thumping of the shuttering green machine, the crumpling of losing tickets, and groans of disgust from losing players. The lottery makes its own music; it has its own jargon.

In a quest to support myself this summer, I took a part-time job at a pharmacy down the street from my house. When I started the job, I had no idea I would be expected to run the lottery machine. Never having played the lottery, I could not attest to its force. I always met the idea of winning something for relatively nothing with scorn, but for regular lottery players, it sometimes seems to be a life force.

People who do not play the lottery often ask me how I can run the machine. They shake their heads and laugh at the concept. But they have a point; the machine is not easy. Its daunting face is as complex as a Pittsburgh traffic grid. When I started to learn the machine, I punched the numbers timidly and often made simple mistakes that caused the lottery’s patrons to snap at me and bark, “get someone else who knows what they’re doing”