'Lotto Tree' is for the children

By Sally Allen

Published: December 6, 2005

Yes, Westwood Elementary School students, the politicians are wrong. They have been influenced in this Gilded Age of governmental gambling. They believe no budget can be balanced or program funded through ways which are not comprehensible by their little minds.

Alas! How dreary our Capitol will be without your glorious "Lotto Tree." As dreary as if there were no Christmas at all.

Crafted by creative, well-meaning hands and adorned with discarded lottery tickets carefully cut (using blunt scissors) into mathematically correct geometric shapes -- your special tree holds a lesson for everyone.

Kids losers as 'Lotto Tree' falls
More Outside the Box columns

In this great universe of ours, childlike faith, creativity and wonder make tolerable our teachers' days. The classroom spirit of the 'Lotto Tree' shall live on in future fairy tale dances and sugar plum dreams.

Remember, the most real things in this world are those that "politically correct" eyes will never see.

Someday, state Rep. Randy "The Grinch" Terrill's grumpiness will amount to nothing more than a cynical cyberblip on the radar screen of your extraordinary, young lives.

Beneath the Capitol dome's soft holiday glow there is no enjoyment. No imagination. No merriment. No meaning to their methodical mainstream madness.

"If it is appropriate to twist the meaning of Christmas by hanging scratched-off lottery tickets on a Christmas tree, then would those same people think it is appropriate to put pornography, cigarettes and beer cans on a Christmas tree and put it on display at the state Capitol?" asked Terrill, R-Oklahoma City.

What's pornography?

Nevermind kids, it's time for recess.