Lucky!

We had our end-of-the-season CSC bowling banquet the other night and, as expected, I didn’t walk away with any big ol’ bowling trophy. I guess bowling 7 games with scores under 100 isn’t quite good enough to garner a trophy.

How do I know I did so dismally? Well, because they provided each bowler with a final stats sheet. Nice of ‘em, huh? Mine was a little discouraging, but I’m guessing I wasn’t the worst bowler either. Fortunately, they don’t write on anyone’s stat sheet “Worst bowler ever!” or “You suck!” or anything like that. Now that would be discouraging!

On the bright side, I did bowl 10 games between 125-150 and 2 games over 150. And we got a steak dinner out of the deal, too. Plus, we had a chance to hang out with friends and even got to meet a few new folks – so it was a pretty good evening all around.

Two of the bowlers at our table won a cash award for being the highest over their average on the last night of bowling. And then they started calling ticket numbers for door prizes. And they called my number! It was a $10 gift card to GetGo so I’m thinking I can’t plan my retirement quite yet… but $10 of free gas is, well, $10 worth of free gas. I’ll take it!

Another bowler at our table won the final door prize, too, so our table was rather lucky.

All in all, I think I’m a pretty lucky person. I’ve had my ticket number drawn quite a bit over the years for various prizes. When I was in my 20s, I used to call radio stations to win prizes – and frequently I was lucky enough to be the correct caller. I’d win tickets to movie premiers, concert tickets, CDs, GCs and other assorted prizes. I even won a free haircut once.

The first time I ever remember winning anything was in 5th grade when I guessed closest to the number of jelly beans in a jar and won an Easter Bunny cake from some sort of fundraising thing at school. (I had to carry that cake all the way home from school that day and I remember thinking I’d probably have preferred winning the jar of jelly beans – it would have been a lot easier to transport anyway. But I remember being excited that I could provide my family with dessert that night!)

I’ve won weird prizes like fire extinguishers and I’ve won cool prizes like $450 designer purses. I can tell you one time I was glad my ticket number wasn’t drawn – the prize was a free tattoo. I don’t have a tattoo and I don’t want a tattoo, but it would’ve been hard to throw away the prize. So I was a little relieved that someone else won that one!

I’ve never been lucky enough to win really big prizes – like a trip anywhere or, say, the lottery. Now that would be lucky and, provided the jackpot was large enough, I probably could start planning my retirement. I did win $20 from a scratch-off ticket once, but it wasn’t enough that I caught the “bug” and started faithfully buying lottery tickets every week.

I’ve been to Las Vegas twice and I can’t say I came home a big winner either time. The last time I was there, I was given a complimentary $10 gambling voucher – so I used it in a Poker machine and got a Royal Flush in my second spin, so I walked away $70 ahead. That was pretty cool.

But otherwise I wasn’t that lucky in Vegas. Like one day, I sat next to a friend who was feeding quarters into the Poker machine and she was steadily winning. I, on the other hand, kept donating my quarters. Very quickly I realized I’d soon be out of quarters and my daily ‘allotment’ of gambling money, so I moved right on over to the nickel machines. I didn’t come out very far ahead, but at least I was able to keep myself entertained for a couple hours.

The luckiest thing that happened on that trip was when a friend and I went to see a Vegas show. Afterwards we grabbed a cab to head back to our hotel…and we found a $100 bill on the seat! Pretty lucky, wouldn’t you say?!

So, while I don’t expect to find a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow, every once in a while I get a fleeting glimpse of that ol’ leprechaun.

Hmmm…maybe I should stop on the way home and buy one of those new Powerball lottery tickets. You never know…