A Girl...

Simon Says - "Free Tickets!" (part one of two)

I have had a string of good luck recently.

I get the weekly newsletter for a local concert venue, and each week there are two questions that one can answer to possibly win free concert tickets. I have entered four times. I have won four times.

I will start this saga by relating the two most salient stories that stand out in my memory of things I have won, the first one in 1979, and the second in 1991-1992.

GRAND VICTORY #1

When I was about 4, my sister's soccer league (or some such thing) had a fundraising carnival. Every 15 minutes throughout the day, there was a cake walk. For those who don't know, a cake walk is where they put out a circle of chairs, and there is one fewer chair than persons. When the music stops, everyone sits, and the person without a chair is out. They do this over and over, until there is only one person on one chair, and that person wins a cake.

I saw this, and I thought to my four-year-old self, "That looks pretty easy... even a small person with no discernible skill or physical strenth, such as myself, could win this." In fact, now that I think about it, I may have actually had an advantage over my medium-to-full sized opponents. I mean really, I used to sit down about a million times a day at that age! I was really quite an expert; I could sit on chairs, I could sit on the floor (straight-leg or indian style with equal dexterity). We even had a paper-mache horse in my classroom, so I was pretty adept at sitting on a saddle, provided it was stationary and there was a stepstool next to it. But regardless, I was a sitter to my very core.

Adults? They never sit! Not like I did, at least. Adults do stupid things like stand, or lean on water coolers. And when they do sit, they make such a big deal out of it. And the big kids are too busy running around all the time to practice sitting with any real dedication. A cake walk is a young man's game. a very young man's game.

So anyway, I prepared a bit of a cake-walk strategy, culled from my keen observations of the previous contests:

1. First and foremost, one must pause in front of each chair, and then take a big step to the next chair. This reduces the likelihood that one will be between chairs when the music stops. It takes precious time to decide Forward? or Back? when the music stops. This point is the necessary antecedent to rule #2, which is:

2. Always know which chair you're going to sit on at any given moment, and what direction it is facing. The change from one chair to the next must be instantaneous.

3. Be prepared to turn your back. As we all know, there is a point at which the circle is too small to maintain its shape, and it becomes a square, a triangle, a pair of back to back chairs. When this happens, you can't rush at the chair and sit, you have to be prepared to spin your butt into the seat. It's the sad amateur that faces the chair, and expects to have time to turn before sitting. The butt that faces the chair gets the chair. Simple as that.

The competition was fierce, dear readers. Yes, it starts out with the gaity of an easter egg hunt, but the riff-raff are soon gone. Those who are in-it-to-win-it keep a sharp mind and an eagle's eye, never straying from the real reason we're out here. As each successive chair is removed, the sweat beads form, the pupils dialate. The senses become more keen, prepared to let instinct take over. With 10 chairs, I was learning to anticipate when the music would stop. With 6 chairs, I could hear the footsteps of my adversaries, counting their steps like cards in a blackjack game. With three chairs left, I could nearly see into the very souls of my cake-seeking nemeses, anticipating each move, each breath, each darting flick of the eye.

As I'm sure you guessed, I won the cakewalk. I remember the moment of victory well, because my opponent and I each made a potentially fatal mistake, but it was I that capitalized on her error. You see, as we were down to one chair, I broke rule #2. I was concentrating so hard on this girl, that I let my attention slip - I hadn't paid attention to the orientation of the chair, and my position relative to it. When the music ended, I didn't know which direction to go. Against anyone else, I would have been done for.

My opponent, however, broke rule #3. She ran towards the chair face first. In that moment, I knew I had her. I slid in backwards, overcoming the defecit I had created for myself. As I felt her land on my lap, I knew that victory, at long last, was mine.

I chose the cake that looked like a bunny. I still hold this in my memory as the first thing I ever won.

Carrying that bunny cake for the rest of the day prevented me from being able to ride any of the carnival rides. I probably could have asked my dad to carry the cake for me, but I didn't even think of it, I was so proud of my victory. I preferred to carry my trophy, and I knew, I just knew that everyone was looking at me and saying to themselves, "That must be the youngest cakewalk winner in history! He must be very skilled, or at least very strong."

Now that I am older, I think that they may have let me win, but I don't care. It was a great day.

GRAND VICTORY #2

My uncle is a NASCAR enthusiast. I am not. I think that the kind of auto racing that involves left AND right turns is pretty cool, and God knows I love a good motocross. However, I used to make my annual trip to the Onaway Speedway every summer for a night of races with my uncle and aunt. Aaah, the sweet Michigan summer nights! The lingering heat, the pollen thick as honey in the air, the smell of rural race fans!

The best part about going to the speedway was that it was the only place in Michigan where there were no mosquitos on a Saturday night - the fumes from the cars killed them all. The Onaway track is a 1/4 mile oval track, and the whole race consists of dudes accelerating REAL HARD and braking REAL HARD over and over and over and over (now that I think of it, it's sort of like a cakewalk but there are no chairs, and you drive). I imagine that rural 1/4 mile racing is one of the top 3 causes of global warming. It's the only time I've ever looked at someone smoking, and thought to myself, "Mmm, cutting out some of these fumes must be nice."

(I should someday take the time to fully express how I feel about fat people who smoke, but this isn't that time, so I'll keep it short. Fat? Fine! I have no problem with that. I'm well on the way myself. But smoking? Smoking is pretty horrendous regardless, but when you're putting one risk factor on top of another, it's just asking for trouble. On a related note, I will mention that you've never seen so much flesh move so fast as when you get off a long plane ride at the Detroit airport. There's always a calvacade of very large people sprinting to the exit so that they can suck down some carcinogens before they have to pick up their luggage. Oy, Michigan, how I weep for thee. My apologies to any offended parties, but if you're fat, stop smoking, and if you're a smoker, don't be fat. Your family will miss you.)

Any sporting event worth its salt includes a raffle, and auto racing at the Onaway Speedway is no exception. There is a raffle after each race. You can win just about anything in the world at the races in Onaway, so long as it's something that a local vendor is willing to donate in exchange for having Toothless McGee say the name of the business over the PA. (A Modest Example: "A special thanks to our sponsor Jimmy Schlebotski, who owns the Belknap Fertilizer Emporium over in Hawks. We have a 40-pound bag of nitrogen-rich potting soil here, for the holder of ticket number 20004548. Do we have a winner? Great! Looks like the lady with the cigarette and the tattoo of a dolphin wins! No, not you ma'am, the one in the red shirt. No, the OTHER one in the red shirt. So you can swing by Schlebotski's Fertilizer Emporium after the races, and pick up your prize!") You get the picture.

The first time I went to the races, my ticket stub had the matching number for the raffle after race 5 (Race 5 was not for cars, but four-wheel ATVs. The good part about the ATV race is that they don't have to slow down around corners, so there's always some super skinny dude with scars and a mullet and some sweet old-school tattoos flipping over into the hay bales, and then the yellow flag waves, and the crowd gets really quiet, and they erupt in cheers when he wobbles to his feet and waves).

(The skinny dude always leave the helmet on when he waves to the crowd. This puzzles me, because you'd think that he wants people to see his face when they cheer for him. I wonder if he's smiling under there, or is he shaking so hard after hitting the hay bale at 65 MPH that he nearly rattles out his remaining teeth? I think he's fine. He's used to this. Skinny-dude is no stranger to rolling vehicles. He lost that Trans-Am back in '88 when he was draggin' with Chit that weekend that his cousin was down from Sault Ste. Marie. And remember when Skinny-guy rolled into the ditch on the way home from Len's bar? They were still drinking their Pabst, and they had to push the car out of the ditch before the cops came. Or there was that time, right after Uncle Clem's wedding, when Skinny-man rolled the Caddy because he was trying to run Norm's tractor off the road because he was sleeping with Donna. Boy was that one stupid!)

(I also wonder if the glory was enough, or did these dudes get to go on the local cable access show and tell about their near-death experience, or maybe end up in a commercial for Schlebotski's? God knows that after the skinny-man stands up, there are at least 40 women in the stands who are thinking about how manly he is, and how anyone that tough could be the daddy of her next baby, or at least after she has this one. So maybe it's not just for the glory.)

But I digress. Anyway, in the raffle after race 5, I won a pound of the cheese of my choice from the Onaway Cheese Factory. After the races, we stopped at the cheese shop to claim my prize. I chose cheddar, naturally, and in the glow of recent victory, I gnawed on that block of cheese all the way home. I must've eaten 1/3 of it by the time we got back to the house. To this day, I wish I'd had the cultural (HA HA! Get it? Culture? And I'm talking about cheese!) leanings to get something like a nice smoked gouda, or perhaps a Port Salut. What did I know? I was 14, and I liked cheddar. Still do.

The following year, I won again. This time, it was a ticket to the next week's races. What happened in the wake of this second grand victory is still a point of contention between me and my uncle:

My memory: I claimed my prize, and said to my uncle, "You can have it, because I won't be here next week," to which my aunt (his wife) replied, "We'll buy it from you. We're coming again next week anyway, so it's the same to us, and you should get something for having won the prize." So I sold it to them for half the face value.

His memory: Being a money grubbing little weasel bastard, I told him that I would sell it to him for face value. He said I should give it to him since I couldn't use it anyway, and I held out until he paid up.

I think that he's just bitter. The last time we talked about this story (a conversation that happens at least bi-annually), he told me that in 16 years of going to the races, he has NEVER WON THE RAFFLE. Ever. I went twice, and won twice. If you ask me, this is the formula for bitterness. No wonder he remembers it wrong.

Tomorrow (or the next day, depending on my mood and work load), I will relate to you, dear readers of Leah's site, the short essays I wrote that have won me four sets of free tickets in the past two months, and I'll let you know just how much I enjoyed each show.

...to be continued...

Posted by Simon at March 17, 2008 01:52 PM