The baffling mystery of the winning raffle ticket of something or other...

 We found out today that Matt won a raffle. I was pretty excited about this because winning stuff is very cool.* Apparently he had bought several raffle tickets off students who were fundraising for trips to Japan and so forth. We discovered through a friend who actually bothers to read the local weekly paper that Matt was in fact winner of the first place prize.

"Woot!" said Debbie. "Yay" and "goody" and other similar expressions of delight at the unexpected fortune may have been uttered as well. Then within a matter of nanoseconds I followed with, "so what did we** win?"

Matt shrugged and answered that he didn't know. He ventured a couple of random guesses that it might be a hamper or voucher of some kind, but the disturbing truth was apparent. He in fact had no idea as to what the prize of the raffle was.

My mind threw up a couple of more understandable explanations for this lack of knowledge. Maybe he was hiding the truth because the prize was too awesome for me handle with any degree of equanimity or maybe it was too pathetically small and would be a disappointment. Maybe he had fallen and hurt his head and thus suffered from a very specific type of amnesia where this one vital piece of knowledge was forgotten, because it just wasn't possible that someone would buy a raffle ticket and not know what the prize was, was it?

Try as I might I could not escape the inevitable truth. He really just didn't know. He had just bought the ticket and not bothered to look at what the prizes were. Maybe I've been reading too many mystery/detective books this summer but it didn't seem to me that one's powers of observation would have to be too extraordinary to notice what the prize was for the raffle. Apparently, Matt was just buying the tickets to help the students and didn't really care about or hope to win anything.

I myself find it impossible to empathise with this seemingly selfless, happy-go-lucky attitude. Regardless of the worthy cause that the raffle is fundraising for, I always envisage myself delighting in the moment of victory when I win and claim my prize. Even if the prize isn't something I particularly want, I can imagine myself enjoying it and thus I want to win it.

Obviously, an extensive perusal of school newsletters and websites followed in the search to find out what it was that we had won. Alas, we were unable to hunt down the prize details of the raffle and I began to fear that the raffle must be small and the first prize may not be so great. Perhaps just one of those meat packs, 3 kilos of beef from Pak n' Save*** or a cheap bottle of wine.

Fortunately, the answer was discovered when Matt found the raffle tickets buried in the depths of his bag. We had won an espresso machine valued at $600. (I did note that the font used to relate the prize information was quite large and legible.)

"Yay!" I said. "Coffee for ME!"****

I promised to also make delicious frothy Hot Chocolates for Matt so that we can both enjoy our prize.


* It is kind of like pressies. Bonus material acquistion. Not necessary stuff you want so much that you would splurge out and buy it for yourself, but to have it handed to you on a platter is highly desirable.

** The inclusive 'we' has become default pronoun in all matters of acquiring stuff. There are some exceptions such as clothing and make-up in which the singular 'my' and 'mine' prevail. Interesting the pronoun 'we' can also be used as a less direct second person pronoun. For example, "We should get up and let the cat in," or "We had better take the rubbish out now," where we = you (as in not me ).

*** Naturally I started fantasising about BBQs and the fun to be had in consuming several kilos of cow.

**** Matt doesn't like coffee. (Hmm, even as I type the words they seem strange and difficult to fathom).