I’ve learned a few lessons from watching others in the last couple of days that I thought may benefit the readers here.

From watching a lady on the news: If a person in a car that almost looks like a cop car (but has no markings) flashes a yellow light at you to pull you over, then comes up to your car in what almost looks like a police uniform (but with no badge or gear and no other markings) and tells you that he’s giving you a ticket but you can go ahead and pay him in cash right now if you want… I learned that the person probably isn’t a cop and you shouldn’t pay him.

From yesterday in line at the lottery ticket machine:

If you try to feed two perfectly crisp new $20 bills into the machine and it won’t take them, chances are the machine just doesn’t like the new $20s - trying six different $20s in all possible directions isn’t going to make the machine like them.

If you have a bill that’s run through the wash so many times you can barely make out the print on it, the machine isn’t going to take it.

If you have a bill that is missing a huge chunk out of the corner, is nearly torn in half, or has lived its life crinkled into a ball the size of a dime and jammed into the bottom of your purse, the machine isn’t going to take it.

If the lottery machine allows you to build up a credit by feeding multiple bills in, you don’t need to feed one dollar in at a time and purchase 350 one-dollar tickets. You can do all the bill feeding up front and buy several larger tickets to save time. No, seriously, you can.

If you aren’t just buying the random set of lottery numbers and the sheet you’ve marked your numbers on - which the lottery machine has to automatically scan - is torn, destroyed, or if you decided not to follow the instructions and mark your sheet within the defined lines, the machine isn’t going to take it, even if you try to put it in 10 or more times.

(All of these lottery machine lessons were learned from the three-person family immediately in front of me in line.)

Anyway, I hope you can all learn from this. I know it was all very educational for me.