Mega Millions winner, where are you?

My wife and I caught lottery fever last week.

It’s probably more accurate to say my wife caught lottery fever while I soothed her overheated brow with a cold compress. Figuratively speaking, that is.

We visited a local convenience store Friday night to buy Mega Millions tickets. We should have apologized to anybody in line behind us — and there were a few dozen — because Holly had lots of questions and she wasn’t shy about asking. Or about telling the cashier, and later, our server at a restaurant, how she was going to be the sole winner and how she planned to spend the money.

We ended up “investing” $15 into five tickets. We also set a new record by not matching even one winning number on any of them. The old Schillig luck running true to form.

In all honesty, that’s OK. I’m not sure I would know what to do with $780.5 million, which was the cash payout, anyway. Which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t be willing to find out.

What I’m less OK with is never finding out who really won. But since the winning ticket was sold in Illinois, that might be the case.

Illinois allows lottery winners of prizes larger than $250,000 to shield their identities from the public. Several other states have similar policies, including Ohio.

This makes sense, I guess. It’s a ridiculous amount of money to receive all at once, or in installments. Having the winner or winners announced publicly could open them to unwanted attention from unscrupulous people.

It sounds like the plot of a movie: A recent lottery winner’s family is kidnapped, and the kidnappers demand umpty-million, unaware that the figure is impossible because the winner has opted for a small percentage of the money every year.

I vaguely recall a Mel Gibson movie called “Ransom” with a kinda/sorta similar story, except Gibson’s character wasn’t a lottery winner. He became fantastically wealthy the old-fashioned way, which I assume was either through inherited wealth or taking advantage of corporate welfare … er, tax breaks.

A less outlandish problem for lottery winners would be the arrival of long-lost relatives and childhood friends. Or random strangers hitting up winners with sad stories, real or imaginary, or with can’t-lose investment opportunities.

So, yeah, Annono Lotto makes sense from that perspective.

Still, though, this means that taxpayers and lottery players have only the lottery’s word about who won and how it’s all paid out. Transparency with public dollars, this is not.

In New York, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed an anonymity proposal in 2019. Instead, he advised potential winners to form a limited liability company (LLC) to keep their names private. According to the New York Post, the tactic worked for 23 Long Island coworkers who took a lump-sum payout of around $262.2 million after winning Mega Millions three years ago. They called their LLC New Life 2019. If there’s a better name, I can’t think of one.

With an LLC, the public, including lottery players, can still birddog that the payout went somewhere other than back into the lottery coffers, and the winner or winners can still maintain privacy.

With last week’s drawing, all the public knows, at least for now, is that the winning ticket was sold at a Speedway gas station in Des Plaines.

And all I know is that a lottery winner in Illinois owes me $15. Plus the $99 it will cost for me to set up an LLC.

You know, to protect my privacy.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

Ain't that tough enuff?

Originally published in March 2014.

Sometimes I’m amazed that I survived my childhood.

I didn’t grow up in the golden age of home remedies, but just slightly thereafter, perhaps in the slow sunset of that era. It was long before this current age, certainly, when running to the doctor for every hangnail and cough is the default setting for most parents. I bet I survived any number of horrible diseases — diphtheria, whooping cough and dengue fever among them — without anybody making formal diagnoses. This is probably true for anybody over the age of 35.

Back in the dark ages when Jimmy Carter was president and Elvis had morphed from a pelvis-rattling rebel into a fat, sad man in a sequined jumper, parents didn’t have access to WebMD, 24-hour hotlines, and fancy phone apps to pinpoint a child’s illness the way smart bombs hone in on Middle Eastern targets today. Instead, they had to work with the tools at hand.

For my mother, these tools consisted of McNess Mentholated Ointment, an old sock, and sticks of butter. Any sore throat or respiratory problem could be cured with a combination of these elements, and often with all three.

I don’t know if you can still buy McNess. My guess is that the government banned it around the same time as DDT, but that Mom squirreled away a lifetime supply in the basement, next to the strychnine-laced rat traps. McNess came in circular, red-and-gold tins, one of which could last for approximately seven years, no matter how often it was used. The ointment was a thick, viscous, yellow, like phlegm in an old man’s handkerchief.

As kids, my sister and I would go to ridiculous lengths to disguise a sore throat. I can remember practically turning blue at the dinner table to avoid coughing, for fear that the dry hack would be occasion for Mom to break open a tin of torture the way a boxer opens a can of whoopass on his weaker rival.

Sometimes, I’d pretend to whisper to hide impending laryngitis, or practice flexing my throat muscles to tamp down the urge to sneeze, or quickly dart my tongue up into my nostrils to wipe away the telltale drainage, lest sickness be discerned there.

Despite my best efforts, though, illness was always found out, in which case came the trifecta of terror. First, Mom would rub McNess all over my chest and throat, massaging it in with broad, firm strokes. Next, she would wrap an old sock around my neck, secured with a safety pin, the better to seal the salve, which announced itself through a pungent odor that sent the dog scurrying from the vicinity.

Then it was off to bed, even if it were 7 p.m., with the door closed, copious covers piled atop me, and a vaporizer — Mom’s only concession to 20th century medicine — running at full blast. If I survived until morning, that meant school.

But school could only be faced with the help of the third item on the list, the aforementioned butter stick, melted into liquid on the stove and fed one spoonful at a time to the complaining victim. The objective, she said, was to coat the throat — a piece of rhyming doggerel that she no doubt learned from a voodoo medicine man who practiced near her childhood farm in Maximo — and prevent future coughing.

If I was lucky, I’d be given a few Smith Brothers cough drops to carry in my pocket to class, in case the all-night McNess treatment, respiratory-choking sock and butter didn’t do the trick. The goal was always to keep me healthy enough to face another day of elementary drudgery.

Smith Brothers, you may note, is not even considered medicine today. Instead, it is shelved with the candy. In other words, my entire war against pneumonia, strep throat, raging sinus infections and any number of other medical woes was fought with a variation of motor oil, a tube sock, a dairy product, and some sugar-laced placebos.

Amazingly, I lived. More amazingly, I tried some of these remedies on my own child. But the first time I melted a stick of butter in the microwave and tried to feed it to my daughter, my wife threatened to call Child Protective Services.

Instead, we went to the doctor.

I suppose that was for the best. My childhood toughened me considerably, but it’s an entirely different century and millennium these days. Although part of me wishes I could enter “sore throat” and “hacking cough” into Google and see the words “McNess” and “white sock” pop up as treatments.

For one thing, it would be a heck of a lot cheaper.



Chris Schillig, who can be reached at chris.schillig@yahoo.com and on Twitter at cschillig, actually had a very good childhood, as long as he stayed healthy.

Afternoon-shift workers, I salute you

This one's from waaaaay back in July 2008. I've worked a few more afternoon shifts since then, and they still suck.

To those who work afternoons, I salute you.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been among your ranks, working my summer gig at The Review behind-the-scenes, putting stories and photos on pages. Because it’s a morning paper, we work afternoons and evenings packaging news for your next day’s edification and enjoyment.

I haven’t worked a steady afternoon shift for years. In college, I attended classes in the day and worked afternoons, evenings and weekends. It was easier then. The body was more prone to snap back quickly.

The problem with afternoons, as readers who work the shift know, is you’re always waiting to go to work.

Whether shopping, mowing the lawn, reading a book or running an errand, you have one eye on the clock, and a little voice inside your head is counting down.

You pretend it’s not so, but it is. If somebody asks you to go out of town, you accept only on days you have off. Otherwise, you’re running a mission with military precision, departing at 0900 hours to return home at 1400 hours to get ready for work. God forbid a friend wants to break for lunch or dawdle an extra 10 minutes. Move soldier, move, move, move.

You don’t get that gotta-be-back stress working days. Day workers come home from the job and go somewhere else without worrying what time they get back. Coming home late just means a little less shut-eye that night.

In sleep-deprived America, where everybody looks like an extra from Night of the Living Dead until noon or a fourth cup of coffee (whichever comes first), wandering around bleary-eyed is part of the dress code.

Midnight shifts are also better than afternoons because you have a longer stretch of time, psychologically speaking, to be off duty. Yes, you sleep during the day, which I’m convinced is not normal, but the trade-off is you wake up when all the zombies get off work, so you can spend time with them before your job begins.

As a Review colleague endlessly delights in pointing out, I am an up-before-dawn freak who finds greatest productivity between 5 and 9 a.m. The rest of the day is all downhill, and by 3 p.m., I’m ready for a nap.

My colleague is the opposite. He’s up at times when I believe sensible folks ought not be, listening to music or reading when the only people prowling about are vampires, grave robbers and Dumpster divers. He even takes naps at 11 p.m. so he’s not too tired to stay up even later.

He wonders how I’m holding up on afternoons, when my creativity is at its lowest.

Surprisingly, I’m doing OK, despite still waking up between 5 and 6 a.m. each day. I’ve never needed a lot of sleep anyway, and a few extra bags under my eyes just make it look like I’m packed for a longer trip.

The biggest change is coming home to a house where things have happened while I’ve been away. Not major things, mind you, but little signs that life continues without me. Food has been eaten, television watched, clothes washed and dried.

During the day, it’s just me and the pets. They sleep and I putter about doing little solitary things.

Not admitting it, of course, but watching the clock. It’s the curse of afternoons. I’m happy to have them, but I’ll be just as happy to be finished. Afternoon workers have my sympathy and respect.

How funky is Bob Dylan, anyway?

This was originally published in May 2014. I no longer have students write the assignment mentioned in the next paragraph. Maybe I should bring it back. 

Every year, my Advanced Placement Language students write and share “This I Believe” essays, modeled on the long-running National Public Radio series, as their final exam. This is my contribution to the cause.

***

I believe in the right of people to interpret certain phenomena however they best see fit.

For example, I was driving last weekend, thinking about a comedian who recently said that folksinger Bob Dylan was overrated. The gist of the comedian’s argument was that Dylan can’t sing or play the guitar and harmonica very well, and that he writes lyrics that are inscrutable.

As I pondered this opinion, I was reminded of the song by the Counting Crows, “Mr. Jones,” with lyrics that run, “I want to be Bob Dylan/ Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky/ When everybody loves you, son, that’s just about as funky as you can be.”

A few seconds later, that very song came on the radio. It made me arch an eyebrow, I confess.

One can interpret this phenomenon a variety of ways. Some people might see it as a little tip of the hat from the Big Man Upstairs, God’s way of sending a sign that Dylan is either A-OK or really is overrated. Or maybe God guided the radio programmer’s hand at that instant to make the song jibe with my thoughts. Or maybe God guided my thoughts to Dylan at that moment to make me arch my eyebrow as I did, creating a minor miracle to convince a nonbeliever.

A second interpretation is that the confluence of Dylan-related thoughts and Dylan-related song is a mere coincidence, one of many that occur throughout a normal day. According to this line of reasoning, hearing “Mr. Jones” on the radio a moment after I thought of it has more to do with the format of the station (it plays only '90s alternative and grunge, and “Mr. Jones” is an example of the former) than divine intervention.

A third interpretation is to shrug one’s shoulders, say “Who cares?” and just enjoy the damn song.

The beauty of being creatures of consciousness is that we can choose any of these options, and many other explanations besides, to fit our own belief system — and not just about Bob Dylan.

The second interpretation above is my own, but I recognize that many people would choose what’s behind door number one. And that’s cool.

Personally, I have a hard time buying the concept that we should be thankful to a higher power when He/She/It cures cancer or lets three out of five people survive a tornado without also being angry that He/She/It gave us the cancer or caused the tornado. It’s easier not to believe.

But I recognize that many people have reconciled these conundrums in ways that I have not, and I’m fascinated by this, just as I know that some people are fascinated by the way I think and the way that I have reconciled my non-belief.

None of which, of course, will stop people who interpret phenomena through a religious lens from praying for me, damning me, or ignoring me; just as I doubt that I will stop believing that these same people are squandering parts of their lives that could be spent more productively elsewhere.

And you know what? It’s a big, wide world out there, and it’s much more interesting with a wide diversity of people and opinions in it. If I’m fortunate to live long enough, maybe some of these opinions will change my mind about what made the Counting Crows blare through my radio that morning. But if not, the conversations will have been worth having, and the exposure to alternate points of view illuminating.

One thing’s for sure, however. Whether songs are divinely programmed or subject to chance, Bob Dylan really is just about as funky as he can be. This I believe.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com