I Never Win Anything

Every time there is any kind of prize giveaway or lottery I will inevitably hear a few of the losers say, "I Never Win Anything". Apparently no one ever wins anything because everyone alive seems to have said this at one time or another...except for me. I never say this because in fact I have won stuff on several occasions and I would like to say that it's really not all it's cracked up to be.

For every 40 million dollar jackpot or new 12 bedroom house, there is millions of "free pedicures" won by Freds and Roccos, and almond treat gift baskets won by people with severe nut allergies. Most of the time you end up spending more money than you want to, at a store you normally don't shop at, because you won a gift certificate there. If you don't win big it's almost guaranteed you'll win stupid: Single Richard will win the Mary Kay gift set and vegetarian Anna will win the GrillMaster's Steak Guide. They will give away their prizes and will resent the bitch down the way who won the DVD player.

Case in point, today at a charity raffle where pretty much everyone wins there were prizes like a telescope, a cordless phone and paid vacation days. There were even lesser prizes that were pretty good like coffee baskets, gas certificates and calendars--myprize: a framed picture of boys playing hockey. Seriously? Boys playing hockey. Because if there are two things I love it's children and sports. The prize could literally not be suited less for anyone alive. But this is only one of a history of prize disasters:

STEREO: I know what you're thinking, how the fuck is a stereo bad? It isn't. The thing is, it was for my brother-in-law's stag party raffle so I bought an obscene number of tickets to support the cause. It's a nice stereo but I'm moving into a shoebox and have no idea where I could put it anyway, so I'll probably end up selling it for less than the raffle tickets cost. Awesome. Plus, I won one other prize that night: A DVD copy of National Lampoon's Gold Diggers starring the incomparable wife (ex-wife?) of Ian Ziering...Whats-her-face Ziering. I think that speaks for itself.

FABUTAN PACKAGE: I'm sitting at home and the phone rings, the conversation that follows is pretty much exactly what transpired:

Naomi: Hi, my name is Naomi from Fabutan SunTan Studios, I'm calling for a Jamie.
Me: Speaking
Naomi: Hi Jamie, I'm just calling to let you know you've won a 200 minute FabuTan tanning package.
Me: Oh Great *pregnant pause*...why?
Naomi: The ballot you filled out at our North location was chosen in a draw.
Me: I've never been to a tanning salon.
Naomi: Well the ballot you filled out was picked, so you can redeem it at any of our locations.
Me: I didn't fill ou...
Naomi: Have yourself a great day. *click*

I'm a pasty mother fucker and burn like kindling in the sun so this made no sense to me whatsoever. I was going to Portugal and wanted to get a base tan anyway so I decided to take the opportunity. I had to pay a base membership fee and had to buy some suntan shit but thought it was worth it since I had all these free minutes. I went to two sessions and stopped since it became clear lying in a tube baking under artificial light was not working for me...that and the dry skin it caused made me feel like an itchy leper, dry humping anything I could use to scratch every part of me at the same time.

The good news was the prize was transferable so I was going to sell my leftover 184 minutes to a friend. I went in a few months later and my account was empty. Turns out it was my sister who had filled out the ballot. She'd used everyone's name she knew when she was filling them out in case her ballot was drawn twice, and when she discovered I had won she used all the remaining minutes. I can't blame her since it was technically her prize but once again winning something actually ended up costing me money. Great.

JACK-O-LANTERN: My Grade 4 class spent the day before Halloween carving a pumpkin. At the end of the day the teacher put our names in a hat and the lucky person picked would get to take the masterpiece home. I wanted it so bad since my parents never got a jack-o-lantern I thought it would be such an awesome surprise and then Ms. Bristow called the name--Congratulations Jamie! I was so excited, it was the first time I'd ever won anything in my life. I was so excited in fact that on the way home I got on the wrong school bus. There were all these unfamiliar faces but I didn't really notice until there were very few people on the bus and the truth dawned on me. Out of embarrassment I got off at some random stop and waited until the bus drove away before I started randomly walking around.

Picture a scrawny little 8 year old boy, velcro shoes, unmatching buttoned shirt collar sticking out from under his sweater carrying a behemoth pumpkin around in a Loblaws bag whose handles had ripped off. What was originally a fun prize I couldn't wait to being home became an unbearably heavy burden. As I walked up the streets not recognizing anything (I was a 25 minute walk from home but I was new to the neighborhood) I began to think I would never get home and no one would ever see the jack-o-lantern and it was too heavy to carry anymore so I did what any intrepid young boy would do: I started crying; openly and without shame. Luckily some high school girls found me sobbing and walked me all the way to my house. By the time I got there I hated that overgrown squash and lamented ever winning it in the first place.

So you see next time you proclaim, "I never win anything" remember, winning really isn't everything--often it leaves you empty or broke or alone on Guildwood Way holding a giant gourd.