And The Winner Is...

"Halo. Senyore Dough Nald Wall Tone por favor."
"Este es Dough Nald."
"Senyore Dough Nald soy (unintelligible)de La Reina. Le llamo decir tu gana el premio."
"Really? Cuantos?"
"Doscientos dollars."
"Well alrighty then! I mean, thank you, er gracias. Yo voy ahi hoy."
"...taluego."

La Reina, bouncing, bubbly, beautiful Boquete's (too much Bing Crosby alliteration over the holiday will do this to you) small department store had a promotion for Christmas. For every ten dollars you spent in their store you received an entry for a drawing they would have two days before the big event. I filled out a handful a week or so ago and dutifully put them in the raffle box. After that, of course, I never gave it a second thought. Now in truth, and in general, I consider myself a winner because of all the good I have and have had in my life. But of contests? Fat chance. Seven or eight hundred lottery scratch off tickets later I'm down a couple thousand bucks and hoping to get back to even. My chances of having an entry of mine picked in a drawing ranked right up there with the well known cold day in hell. Not that I had never won anything mind you. I could think back and remember a turkey I'd scored by bowling "best over average" one Thanksgiving eve and Denver Nuggets tickets I pocketed by winning a free throw shooting contest at my local gym. But a blind luck, pick it out of a hat kind of thing? No way Jose.

Well wrongo Raffle Breath and yes way Jose as the phone call written above attests to. That's right, me, Dough Nald - I had to use my passport name to qualify - was now officially a winner of two hundred balboas or, actually, two hundred dollars worth of merchandise. Whoda guessed it?

Now before I move along to far less important stuff than me being a winner, like the annual day in which several billion people celebrate some dude's birthday for instance, I want to add that when Woowoo Charly and I went to retrieve the winnings, there was a parking place directly in front of the store's doors. (Store's doors? Say that five times fast.) How often has that happened to you? And then, after walking around and filling up our shopping basket with what we estimated was in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks, Woowoo and I deposited the merchandise on the counter and had the cashier add it all up. The total? Two hundred dollars and ten cents. Now that Sportfans, is good shopping. We then paraded most of the goodies over to another counter where we got FREE gift wrapping! Really! It is good...very very good to be the king in a store named "The Queen."

And speaking of good. Christmas day was a blast. Good friends, good food, good fun, good times. What more can I say? (Did I mention I was a winner?)