Meet Mr Collector!
Jul 30
Did you ever win a contest?
Spoiler Alert: You actually have to enter one to be a contender. But assuming that you were you’d want to win, right? We all do. It doesn’t matter if it’s only a game of Monoply (with or without Jail) or a scratch-off Lotto ticket for 2 bucks. Sure, the big time lottery would be nice, but winning anything does wonders for the old psyche.
Anyway, my handsome husband did, win a contest that is, and here’s how it happened:
One fine day I received, along with dozens of other emails, a request to enter a contest for Tommy Bahama. All you had to do was be a man, wear Tommy Bahama shirts, and send a photo of you wearing one of them.
Bingo! As luck would have it (I do so love it when luck decides to have it) I had on my very desktop a photo of The Man wearing his favorite Tommy Bahama shirt. So I followed the link and followed the directions: insert photo; write a few words about you and your shirt; click Enter.
As ghost-writer in chief, here’s what I plunked down in as long as it took to type it.
My wife got me this shirt some years ago. I loved it, but more important, she thinks I look handsome in it. Since then, I’ve gotten a number of Tommy Bahama shirts, some solid, some prints, but this is my all-time favorite. It makes me feel young!
The story might have ended there, but . . .
I had the brilliant inspiration of putting the photo on Facebook with news of the contest, and then, wouldn’t you know it, all kind of “friends” started asking me if they could vote for Lou and what prize would he win.
An island in the Caribbean would have been nice, but when I checked, the prizes were Tommy Bahama shirts and gift certificates. No palm trees or coconuts, other than those on the shirts, but what the hell. We all do so love to win contests. And you never want to say, “I coulda been a contender,” now do you?
I found out that you couldn’t vote, but you could become a “fan.”
Well, Lou has lots of fans, and after a short but aggressive campaign on Facebook—helped along by four FB-addicted daughters and numerous grandchildren who may or may not have fanned him multiple times (I take the fifth on this)— he got enough to win!
Okay, not the grand prize, which was a one-of-a-kind special edition shirt, but the nice camp shirt you see here and a gift certificate for $50, which doesn’t buy you all that much at Tommy B’s, and will mean spending more than the value of the shirt.
Who cares.
The thing is, every time he wears the prize shirt, he’ll remember winning the contest—and since not everyone, strange to say, is on Facebook, many more would have voted for, er, fanned, him, had they only known. And I’ll know what I’ve known all along: He’s a winner!
