September 10th, 2010

A fun sort of freakishness

I am very tired and miserable today, so I thought I would cheer myself and possibly my readers by talking about one of my better skills: winning raffles. I don’t know if talking about my gift in this way will cause it to evaporate, but I have been silent too long: I am Rebecca, and I win raffles. Not always, but an awful lot.

It all started when I was 5, with my first-ever raffle ticket. My parents had valiently held out against the Cabbage Patch Kid craze, insisting that no toy that was worth whatever they cost, I think maybe $40 or so. But they did consent to give me a $1 to enter the raffle at the local fair, one of the prizes for which was a Cabbage Patch Premie, pretty much the most adorable thing ever.

“I’m going to win that doll,” I told my mother.

“That’s not the way it works. You just pay for a chance to put your ticket in with a lot of other people’s tickets and they only draw one. You probably won’t win the doll,” said my mother.

I won the doll. Terrible lesson. Or at least, it would have been if I didn’t continue to win stuff.

Mind you, I’m talking about raffles–local fundraisers with prizes donated by the community or door prizes at parties, not lotteries or sweepstakes or anything involving a cruise ship. I think the most any of my prizes has been worth is about $100, and mainlysignificantly less. Plus the largest *cash* prize I’ve ever received was $8. But I’ve gotten some nice stuff, and it’s good for morale to win things. Here, for the sake of my morale, and to prove that my gift is real, is a lifetime list of stuff I’ve won in raffles (more or less chronological):

–Cabbage Patch premie

–stuffed white dog holding Christmas stocking in mouth

–My Little Pony baby seahorse

–black corderoy trucker’s cap with advert for local famer’s co-op on it

–stuffed white bear wearing red scarf

–dinner at Swiss Chalet

–anthology of poetry reviews

–bag of Hallowe’en chocolate

–bath set (there may have been more than one of these; sort of a blur)

–chance to go see Tragically Hip for only $7

–enormous cookie

–gift certificate to bowling alley

–ritzy dinner in French restaurant

–Mac8600 (used)

–$100 gift certificate for Ryerson bookstore

–$20 gift certificate for Amazon.ca

–centrepieces (many; mostly ones I could not carry on the bus and had to leave behind; once famously a tin sandbucket, which I have grown very attached to)

–elaborately frosted chocolate cake

–broadside by Al Purdy about Charle Bukowski

–movie tickets, various, including passes to any cinema, passes to press screenings of new movies, and tickets to a TIFF screening

–hand mirror with matching brush

–illustrated copy of Hamlet