Luck treats a lady

We love our bottle deposit refund here in Michigan, and in most garages you will find bins overflowing with sticky piles of aluminum and plastic.  No one ever takes back just a few cans or bottles at a time because it’s much more fun to fill your cart with the bounty and wait your turn at the sorting machine.  Autumn absolutely loves the sorting machine.

Back in 1992 we had no sorting machine.  We had a counter, behind which stood two guys named Randy and Jeff.  Randy and Jeff did not like to count and thus would place implicit trust in your ability to accurately report the numbers.  If you were on friendly terms with Randy and Jeff, as I was at the time, they would sometimes fudge the numbers and give you back several dollars more than what was owed.  I bought a few good paperback novels thanks to them.

So this one day back in 1992 I’m in my bedroom gathering up my cans to take back to the store and took notice of the contest advertisement.  Win a pair of airline tickets to anywhere in the U.S., the can said.  I turned my attention to the box in which the soda had been packaged and read further.  I was to look inside each can to see if a special code was printed on the bottom.

I decided not to waste my time and started shoving the cans into a plastic bag.  I was going to get more from taking these back to the store than I ever would from some stupid contest, I thought.

I don’t know what it was that made me go back and check the cans, but I wound up pulling them out of the bag to look inside.  And there, on the bottom of one can, was a very distinct printed code; TRP.

TRP?  I looked at the box again.  TRP was a winning code.

I won?

I let that sink in for a minute as I read through the contest rules again.

Holy crap, I won!

I rushed out to the backyard where my father was and shrieked out the news. IwonIwonIwonIwonIwonIwon!  He took the can from me, examined it in the sunlight and assessed that I was not off my rocker.  It looked like I had a winner.

It took several weeks for me to hear back from the soda company once I sent the can back to them, but they finally confirmed that I had indeed won.  They sent me a letter of congratulations and a voucher for two airline tickets which my mom and I used to book a January flight to Phoenix.

Now I’m telling you that rather long story to tell you this short one.

I won!  IwonIwonIwonIwonIwonIwon!

A couple of weeks ago I entered a Johnson & Johnson-sponsored contest to win one of twenty $1200 scholarships to help pay for BlogHer expenses.  Last week I received an e-mail letting me know I was one of the winners.  Holy crap, I won!

So, having reaped a lifetime’s worth of dumb luck karma, I now have no use for lottery tickets or slot machines.

Thank you, Johnson & Johnson and BlogHer!  I will be seeing you both next week.

Tagged as: BlogHer, contest, Johnson & Johnson, win