Well, it’s Christmas time in Oklahoma…and I do mean
CHRISTMAS time, not holiday time. If you
foolishly assume that not everyone celebrates Christmas here in the Beautiful
Buckle of the Bible Belt and, like the crazy liberal you are, you wish someone
Happy Holidays, a surprising number of people have no problem correcting you in
a rather superior tone. “Merry CHRISTMAS!” they assure you.
It’s terribly jolly, make no mistake.
And nothing says Christmas
like the annual small town $10,000 Jingle Bell drawing! Opie and I attended this extravaganza on
Saturday…one of us brimming with confidence and optimism and the other
grumbling about crowds and longing for an afternoon of beer drinking and hockey
viewing (I will let you all decide which was which!)
But I get ahead of myself as some of you are probably
wondering what the heck the Jingle Bell drawing is. It’s actually very simple. From November 13th until December
13th a variety of local merchants hand out these little raffle
tickets when you purchase something from them.
Then, on the last Saturday before Christmas Eve, there is a drawing in
the town square in which they give away two $500 prizes, two $1,000 prizes and
one $10, 000 prize. The only catch is that you have to be present to win.
So, I’ve been collecting tickets every time I go to the
grocery store and convinced Opie that we had to go. See, I was expecting a Christmas fair type
atmosphere….I was expecting merchants to have stands, I was expecting
entertainments, I was expecting an EVENT.
What I got was about 3,000 people standing around the town
square holding fistfuls of raffle tickets while a couple of enterprising high
school students meandered through the crowd selling candy bars they had clearly
purchased in bulk from Sam’s Club.
Which is not to say that I wasn’t entertained. I mean, I had a hysterical time nudging Opie
and discreetly pointing out the various and sundry wildlife…like the heavily
pierced and tattooed biker guy who was holding a tiny sweater-wearing Pomeranian. Or the surprising number of women wearing
famous QVC “Bump up the Pony” hair extensions that didn’t match the rest of
their hair…not to mention the man that Opie was convinced was wearing a “Bump
up the Beard” hair extension clipped to his cheeks. Or the little group I called the denim family
in which all four of the females (mother and three daughters) were wearing
ankle length denim skirts with oversized sweatshirts that said “Go Kiefer
Trojans!”
I really REALLY hope that’s a sports team.
But my favorite group was the little huddle of people
directly behind Opie and I who spent a surprising amount of time mocking the
woman announcing the raffle numbers for saying “Y’all.” Which surprised me a little since I have been
y’alled about a thousand times since I moved here. And then, after eavesdropping closely, I
realized they didn’t care about the word “y’all” they cared that SHE was saying
y’all. Apparently she is some sort of TV
personality in the Tulsa area and she clearly does NOT say y’all on the nightly
news. So, for her to dash over to our small town and start y’alling like a
local is insulting to say the very least.
In the words of the city kids I used to work with, she was
clearly fronting.
After years of being in charge of Conflict Mediation, I know
that an appropriate reaction to this kind of behavior is to rush the stage
screaming “You ain’t representing!” over and over….but I didn’t want to get
kicked off the square because, as I mentioned earlier, you have to be present
to win.
And this was before Opie and I realized that we had NO
BUSINESS thinking we had any chance of winning the Jingle Bell drawing. See, I had collected twenty-three different
tickets and there were about 3,000 people there. I thought we had as good a chance as anyone.
WRONG!
Our twenty-three tickets was like a teaspoon in the ocean of
tickets. I mean, we could easily hold
our tickets in one hand. Most people
there had HUNDREDS of tickets. A man next
to us had a poster board with tickets in sequential order glued to both
sides. Another woman had a Ziplock baggie
full of tickets in one hand and a full printed page listing the numbers in the
other. Another woman had a binder with
album pages holding all her tickets.
It was unbelievable.
And we didn’t win…not this year….but next year I’m going to
plan early. I’m going to refuse to go
into a business in town unless they support the Jingle Bell drawing. I’m going to go to the grocery store and buy items one at a
time, collecting tickets each time. And, if that doesn’t work, I’m going to take
a lesson from the enterprising teens in the crowd and I’m going to wander
around selling candy for three times the normal going cost.
It’s going to be awesome.
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