A Very Pleasant Surprise

I am not someone who wins things often. As a matter of fact, the last thing I remember winning was a giant pumpkin, 'way back in 1978, I think. I was with my mom in one of the past-glory-days big box stores, that's long gone now, and she'd bumped into an old friend there. As I was standing there, bored out of my mind while they yack-yack-yacked about things of no relevance to adolescent me, I spotted this sign nearby about winning awesome prizes. Intrigued, I checked it out. All you had to do was guess the weight of this enormous pumpkin. Ok. It was something to do while I waited impatiently.

Not being a mathmatical genius by any stretch of the imagination, I took one uneducated guess, judging by the sheer girth of the thing, and wrote it down on the slip, with all my info (name, address, telephone.) The ladies were still at it, so I continued to fill out slips. I just threw a set of random numbers down, with a decimal point somewhere in the midst, slip after slip, until I got writers' cramp. Finally, Mom was done and we left the store, with the pumpkin promptly forgotten.

About a week or so later, I got this call from the store, asking for me. Confused at first, I couldn't imagine why they'd call me. I hadn't shoplifted or anything, and certainly hadn't applied for a job. You guessed it...I won! I was all excited, hardly believing my ears.

"Which number won?" I asked.
"Excuse me???" came the reply.
"Well, I made more than one guess, so which one was right?"
Turns out it was one of those random numbers, about twenty digits long.
Huh. Go figure.
Probably made me look exceptionally brilliant.

"So, what did I win?" I asked.

I won a "fabulous turkey dinner for two, including 2 complimentary glasses of wine" at the store's attached restaurant (whoo hoo!) and...
the pumpkin.

Ok. So I dragged someone with me to redeem the prize, ate the semi-edible turkey dinner in the ambiance-free setting, too young to drink the wine (even tho' the drinking age was 18 back then!), and loaded that pumpkin into the back seat of the car (no small feat!) Triumphantly, I brought the pumpkin into the house, where it sat in all its orange glory on a table in the living room for quite some time, the conversation-starter of the decade, until it was time to butcher it and turn it into many, many dinner-time experiments (and a freezer-full to last a very, very long time.)

Ok. Fast forward to yesterday, 29 1/2 years later.

One of my music students gave me a beautiful big coffee mug for Christmas, with this really pretty wintery scene etched on its clear glass, the envy of the household. Everybody wants to drink out of it. It was filled with Lindt truffles (mmmm) and a Starbucks gift certificate. Very nice. Very thoughtful gift to a music teacher who's on the road a LOT, and who's always pinching pennies, so I don't treat myself to this sort of thing very often. I have been doling out the precious cups, trying to make it last as long as possible, seeing how many beverages I could get with it.

Last week, I used my last of the gift certificate, a bit sadly. It was a bittersweet moment, when I surrendered the card, remembering fondly the cute little boy and his sweet mom who had bestowed it lovingly upon me. As I stood on line, I noticed a chalk board with the trivia question of the week. Apparently, you could guess at the answer, put it on your receipt with your name and telephone number, and you'd win free coffee or something. Ok. I had noticed this board before, but the questions were always something I didn't know...based on nuclear physics, or some rock idol, or which celebrity shared a birthday with Lewis Carroll or some such. But this day, I happened to know the answer! Yippee. So, after placing my order, I asked how to supply my try at the prize, filled out the slip, and was on my merry way, the question now forgotten.

Yesterday, I had a very long day of teaching ahead of me, so I stopped mid-way through to purchase a cup of the brew that I've begun to enjoy (especially now that I have finally learned HOW to order there...sooo complicated!) When it was my turn, I looked up to see the flavors of the day, and saw my name in big bold print on the chalkboard.
"Hey, that's me!" I said.
"What?"
"Up there...that's my name!"
"Can you prove it?"
"What???"
"Can you prove it?"
"You mean like with i.d. or something?"
"Yeah...I gave a prize to someone once who said it was them, and then the real person came in to claim the prize and I'd given it to the wrong person."
"Oh. Well, my pocketbook is in the car (dumb move, I know), but I can go get it."
"Is that your mail you're holding?"
"Yes."
"That'll do"
So, I handed over a piece of mail with my name on it, and was given a card that said "Customer of the Week" with stamps for 7 complimentary beverages...any type, any size, anything I wanted. Wow!

So, now, I will slowly savor this card, allowing myself hot, comforting, caffeine-laced beverages to get me through long teaching days that stretch into evenings, without pinching pennies, for a little while longer.

Ahhhhh.