50/50 Hindsight

I hate it when the theoretical meets reality. Last week, I was reading this Richard Roeper column on the trend of people giving back their winnings in charity 50/50 drawings, and once again wondered what I would do. That was Thursday. Friday night we won a 50/50 drawing at a high school basketball game. Well, I gave my four year-old son a dollar so he could buy three chances from his sister who was selling 50/50 tickets to raise money for new cheerleading uniforms. One of those tickets was the winner.

Fortunately, I had to take that same four year-old home for bad behavior (running onto the court, spilling a drink) before we could collect the winnings, leaving Mrs. TEH there to make the decision on what to do. Well, she decided to keep the money. And that’s fine. It was only $140 and it wasn’t like we were taking from starving third world orphans with AIDS or something. Besides, (and here’s my best of several available rationalizations) if it becomes expected that you donate the other half of the money, it will lessen the incentive to buy chances in the first place. It would make more sense to just solicit donations if there was no winning involved. Right? Anyway, even Roeper says it’s OK to keep the dough.