A Winner Every Time
Last night I attended the Reel Paddling Film Festival at the Kendall, a three-hour collection of the best kayaking and canoeing films of the year.
On the way in, organizers asked attendees to register for two raffles. I didn’t bother registering for the national raffle, both because the odds are long and because I have no use whatsoever for a car rack. But I filled out an entry for the local raffle, since the prizes included a PFD, Teva footwear (ironically, I’d bought a pair just last week), and various passes to Charles River Kayak, the guys I rent boats from.
Over the years, I’ve developed a belief that rumpled raffle tickets have a much better chance of getting pulled from a hat than crisp, uniform tickets. So before I put my entry card in the box, I creased it both lengthwise and breadthwise, then creased each corner in opposing directions: forward, backward, forward, backward.
By now you should be able to guess where this is headed: when the intermission came around and the raffle was held, my ticket was the very first one pulled. Bingo!
Unfortunately, the first items they chose to raffle were Headsweats race caps, so I didn’t win any Tevas or boat rentals or the PFD. But as caps go, it’s a very nice one, since it’s made of the same CoolMax fabric used in most cyclingwear. In fact, it’d make a nice cycling hat, except that I’d have to cut back the brim, which was made extra long for paddlers of course.
With about 150 people in the audience, the odds of my winning weren’t astronomical, but it’s very interesting that after taking such care to differentiate my ticket from everyone else’s, my name was the first one chosen.