A Winning Flyer

It was one Sunday evening, and my hubby and daughter had just come from our mailbox. They had with them a stack of mails, mostly bills and ads. Then they left to play in the yard with our two rambunctious shih-tzus. Finally, it was dark and she remembered to look into the mails again. She found an unusually large shiny placard ad from a local car dealer. What's so special about that ad was it had a key affixed to it. It caught Carmel’s attention,  and her imagination started rolling.

Carmel came looking for me. I was busy re-organizing my closet. When she found me, she said, "Mommy, Mommy, I found a key for a new car!" I simply acknowledged her excitement and off she went back to the living room. To my relief, I resumed my housework.  For the second time, she dragged her daddy and told me that she needed to scratch the three circles that might contain identical $25,000 logos. As she was excitedly scratching one circle after the other, she kept cheering to herself. I was so engrossed with what I was doing that I paid little attention to this moment. Then I heard her squeal and shout, "Mommy, I won! The three circles matched!"  My husband couldn't hide his exhilaration, too. But the skeptic in me asked, "What's the catch?" Then I realized that what was important at that moment was my daughter’s need for affirmation of the possibility that she might have really won something, some hope.  Indeed, there were a number of photographs denoting a variety of prizes, such as an I-Pad,  a vacation cruise, or a brand new car.

So finally, after much waffling over the matter, the day came when my husband and I decided to visit the car dealer and see how legitimate this contest was. The sales representative who accommodated us was calm and honest. He explained to us the mechanics of the contest, without presenting any pressure to buy a car, much to our relief. When it was settled that we are not interested in (really, simply unable to afford) any purchase, he led us to a room where a big poster was displayed. It has all the winning numbers of the different prizes. Lo and behold, our flyer's number was there! It was a winning number! Well, we didn't get the car because the key did not start the ignition, but we won the vacation cruise…a voucher to any one of several exotic destinations!  But instead of the romantic getaway vacation, we agreed to defer to Carmel, whose enthusiasm for the ad and its “magical” key managed to grab our half-hearted attention in the first place.  Wow, our dream to treat our daughter to Disneyworld—a dream long postponed--is finally coming true. My husband had hoped to further our good fortunes in Las Vegas, but Sin City will have to wait.  Yes, we're definitely going to Orlando and bringing our daughter to the Magical Kingdom!  After all, she is our lucky star!