Life's Lotto

 This was written in response to the StoryWorth question: Have you ever won anything?

 

First, I want to say that I see two main ways of winning something. The first way is winning something by chance; kind of outside any effort made on my part, aside from maybe throwing my name in the hat. The other type of winning something is winning through some real effort that I have exerted to win.

I can recall a couple of times where I won something by chance. Both times I won something from work and both times I did not jump up and down for joy. Once, I won a pair of sweatbands to put on my wrists to wear during exercise. I am not even sure how they are used as I don’t usually have sweat dripping down my arms onto my hands when I exercise. I tend to have sweat dripping down my face, my back, my bosom, my belly,  but I don’t recall that much sweat on my arms aside from my armpits. I suppose that wrist sweatbands are useful to reach up with your wrist to wipe your brow but wrist sweatbands make me think more of a person in blazingly white tennies wearing a cute tennis outfit with a tennis racket in hand. I am more of a pull my shirttail up to wipe my brow even chancing to expose my bra in the process kind of gal.

The other thing that I won from work was a poinsettia. Now, poinsettias are not one of my favorite flowers at all. They are okay at Christmas but I am happy for them to fade away after the holidays. That is probably what my poinsettia did; it likely faded away soon after making it home. So those are two examples of me winning by chance, and unfortunately, I wasn’t too grateful for them. I was afraid that my good luck quota had been diminished by winning things that I didn’t really want.  

Now one time when I was in high school, our science club had a turkey shoot as a fundraiser for a trip to Oak Ridge. I don’t imagine that today, a science class would be able to have a turkey shoot on school grounds but back then, school-sponsored turkey shoots were not uncommon.

So, pieces of paper with a big X drawn on them were printed off and strung up on a line. Participants stood behind a line and shot toward the target with a shotgun. The one where a piece of shot had gotten closest to the center of the X was called the winner and won a turkey.

I had not planned on participating but sometimes a person would pay to shoot and then get someone else to shoot for them. Someone paid and then asked me to shoot. I am not sure why but perhaps they thought that the kick from the shotgun would kick me on my butt. Now, I had not really shot a shotgun many times at all, but I had shot one a time or two. I knew that a shotgun kicked and I knew that you had to hold the stock snug against your shoulder or you might experience a harder kick. So I shot the shotgun. Not only did I stay on my feet, but I won the turkey! Now that was a sweet win.

Another reeeeeeeally sweet win that resulted, at least in part, from my efforts, came in Junior High. I was on the basketball team and we had a game against Shelbyville. Shelbyville was kind of an arch-rival for Cascade. They were the largest school in our county and I don’t think that we had beaten them in recent history. They were like a Goliath to our David.

Well, it was the night of the home game playing the Shelbyville Golden Eaglettes. That night, David picked up a stone and we beat old Goliath!!!!!! Stanley Cup winners, Super Bowl winners, NCAA champions had nothing on our school’s Junior Varsity girls’ basketball team that night! We were beyond ecstatic. Folks miles away in Shelbyville likely heard our roar that night!

Winning the game had certainly been wonderful but the most wonderful thing was how proud our coach was. The next day when we went into the gym for basketball practice, Coach Skelton had balloons taped to the walls of the gym with posters that he had made taped everywhere. I still remember a couple of the posters; “Defense, defense is our line. We hold below 29!”, “Defense, defense are these three; great defense provided by Grubbs, Smith, and Lee!” I still remember the glow of the win but even more, I remember the glow of making our coach proud! So that is an example of where my own effort was partially responsible for winning.

Now, this last example of winning was not a win for me. In fact, it wasn’t really a win at all but it was special. It was back in 2003. We were looking for a new vehicle. Our van was on its last leg. The AC was history and it was getting unreliable. We decided to look at Toyota Siennas. We were all at the lot looking at all of the cars trying to decide what was the best that we could afford. Roxanna saw a little silver Corolla that she fell in love with.

So we went home to study if we could afford to get what we wanted. Mohammad said that he really wanted to be able to get the little Corolla for Roxanna. Her 17^th birthday was coming up and her birthday was on the 17^th. That made this birthday very special to my husband and he really wanted to be able to get that car for her. We did some more studying and figured that if we were careful, we would be able to manage it.

So, we decided to do it but before we went back to get it, right before Roxanna’s birthday, the doorbell rings. I look out the door and see the Toyota salesman on the porch. I open the door and he has an advertisement placard with people jumping in the air with excitement due to owning a Toyota. It had an easel back and balloons attached. He told us that he was there to inform us that our names had been placed in a drawing the day we had visited the dealership and Roxanna’s name had been drawn as the winner of a new car. The prize was a little silver Corolla just like the one she had wanted. Roxanna was so excited. She looked at the car and looked at me and said, “Momma, it is just like the one that I loved!”

 

Of course, Roxanna had not really won the car, and I knew that we were going to buy it for her but by the time the salesman left, he had almost convinced me that she had won the car. You see, Mohammad had arranged this little surprise without even telling me. I imagine that he knew that I am not an actress and would have been so excited myself that I would have given the whole thing away. So, that was a fun time when my daughter “won” a car that she hadn’t really won. My husband loves surprises like that. Of course, most of his surprises are not that whopping grand!

So, this little story tells about some of my wins in life.  Now, I consider my biggest wins to have been totally outside of any effort that I exerted, or even could exert. When it comes to my family, I am a winner. I have the most wonderful parents and other family members; and I have been blessed with some absolutely wonderful grandparents, great-grandparents, great-aunts, great-uncles… When it comes to family, God made me a winner!

 

 

I am also a winner because of the place I was born. I was born in a country with many freedoms. I could have been born in a country without freedoms, an authoritarian country where fear of torture or death for non-compliance was the rule and not the exception. I am pretty certain that I would have been toast!

I am a winner because God allowed me to be born in the United States of America. Now the USA is not perfect, but as of yet, the people have the power to try to make it more perfect. I can pray that we avail ourselves of that right and make it so.

In conclusion, my biggest wins have been gifts from God.