Why would anyone who is participating in a lottery have to worry about dirty dishes, unless the prize was something dreadful. Tessie appears to not take the ritual seriously, possibly because of the amount of people in the village or the fact she has been desensitized to the violent ritual. Although they are very young they remember some aspects of the ritual. The children know that they are supposed to use smooth round stones to kill the winner but they do not know why nor do they seem to care. We cannot entirely blame this on human forgetfulness without addressing the issue of hypocrisy.
People hear what they want to hear and choose what rituals to keep for traditions .
The townspeople could have changed the tradition or even investigated the history of the tradition. They, the townspeople, had an active role in the murder of Tessie and cannot blame their actions on forgetfulness but rather on hypocrisy. Forgotten traditions can be extremely dangerous as Shirley Jackson points out in her short story. It, the lottery, could have taken place in any small town across America. Any one of us can forgot something important about a tradition that could eventually lead to dreadful consequences .