24 Hours of Good Fortune

A few weeks ago as I was sitting in the bleachers watching my oldest son's basketball game, the Director of Development for the school joined the rest of the crowd and sat directly in front of me.  He had a stack of raffle tickets in his hand for an Apple iPod touch. I asked him how much ($3 each or 4 for $10); I bought $10 worth. To be very specific, I bought the first ten tickets. I don't know how it happened, but I told him, if I won, I'd give him the prize.

On Friday night, I received a phone call. The call came in kind of late, so it surprised me a bit. The voice on the other end of the phone informed me that I was the winner of a raffle for an . It was late, I was tired, but I thought to myself, and maybe even out loud, "That's cool!" The next morning I recalled my promise. I sure hope he refuses my gift.

On Saturday afternoon, after many weeks of delay and procrastination, I took the boys down to the box office at the American Airlines Center to redeem a voucher for 2 upper level tickets to a Dallas Mavericks game. We arrive at the box office to discover that there are no more tickets available through the voucher, but the ticket agent says to me, "Hold on.  Let me check on something."  She types on her computer for a few minutes. She waits. She types some more. She waits.

Then she turns to me, "We're completely out of the upper deck tickets for this voucher, but they are allowing me to substitute some lower level tickets. Would that be okay with you?"

Like a deer in the headlights I reply, "Excuse me? Would you say that again?"

Repeating herself, "We're completely out of the upper deck tickets for this voucher, but they are allowing me to substitute some lower level tickets. They're $79 seats. Would that be okay with you?"

"Uh. Yes?"

I told my son as we walked away from the box office window, "Sometimes it does pay to procrastinate." And after a long pause, "But you still have to do your homework when we get home."