Winning...

Yesterday, Diane and Ethan went with me to a building down by the University campus to pick up the book I won from a drawing I entered at the Festival of Books over the weekend. I remember the people running the drawing giving me kind of odd looks when I explained to them that I usually won these things when I entered them. I don't think they remember me saying that to them.

I may not have the blood of a tiger, but I do have a propensity towards winning this sort of thing.

My family is starting to get annoyed by this. Oh, except for our youngest son who is very upset when he doesn't win any drawings. I try to explain to him that most people usually don't win those things because guys like me always do, but that didn't seem to be any consolation.

I even gave up on signing up for the drawing at the monthly science lectures we often attended. The prizes weren't really all that good anyway and it wasn't worth making him upset over and over again when I kept getting chosen and he did not.

Here are a few other notable prizes I have won:

- The Grand Prize at pretty much every Christmas office party I have been to for every job I have held that has had a Christmas office party.

- An American Girl brand jewelry box that I won for the girls.*

- An all expense paid trip to India with a side trip to Paris thrown in.

There are, of course, rules to winning these sort of drawings. the most important one is that I have to have an inkling that I am going to win. I also have to announce it aloud to someone else. Usually this someone else is my wife Diane, who will roll her eyes and give me that "You've got to be kidding me" look and then ask why I don't win something like the $5,000 Home Depot gift card instead of another dumb book to clutter up our house.

*The jewelry box also irritated the family, even though they were happy to win. Diane and the girls had diligently went to the store that was holding the drawing almost every day to enter the "enter as often as you like" event. The girls really wanted the box. I went in once and came home and announced that I had entered so I would probably win.

A few weeks later, when the big day had come, we received a phone call from the store letting us know that we could come collect the box. The lady who called also made a point of letting everyone know that I was the one who had won. Come to think of it, so did I.