“No! Only I get to stuff the ballot box!” he hissed at me as he grabbed my wrists and wrestled the stack of raffle entries from my hand…
It was Santa Day–well, actually Santa Night–in our sleepy little Kansas town of Richfield, and the holiday magic was in the air! There were carols to be sung, brown paper bags of Christmas candy to be procured, and wishlists to be whispered into the ear of the shady-ass Santa who we later discovered drove a beat-up Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme instead of a sleigh.
Of course there were also various door prizes to be won by the members of our tiny rural community.1Population: 81 (per 1980 census) True, it was mostly boring ol’ frozen critters like turkeys or hams, because that’s how we country folk liked to roll. But there was one glaring exception to this rule: a small stuffed teddy bear that played Christmas tunes when you pressed its paw.
And 1SkinnyJ (my slightly older brother) wasn’t the only one who desperately wanted to win it.
Now, even though I was only 6 or 7 at the time, I already had a lucky streak going in my nascent life. Movie tickets…Easter egg hunts…definitely not greased pig chases…I wasn’t exactly winning the lottery (yet), but I was still doing nicely for myself when it came to profiting from random events.
“This ends tonight,” he stated firmly, glaring at me with pen in hand. “You always win everything, you lucky little bastard. Now, I’m going to win something for once!”
Unfortunately, I didn’t really hear all he had said because in my mind I had already figured out what that rascal was up to, and was like, “Okay, so we’re doing this. Funk yeah. Let me get my own stack of 25+ raffle entries to fill out…”
Once I got done with mine, I patiently watched him stuff the little shoe box to the brim with pieces of paper with his name chicken-scratched all over them, waiting for my turn to tip the scales of chance in my favor.
That’s when I discovered Step 2 of his evil plan: voter suppression.2Okay, so I wasn’t technically a ‘voter’ per se, but it’s an apt enough analogy when writing this in November 2020 (ahem). He let me put my name in once, but wasn’t about to let me put it in 24 more times. Because we both knew exactly what would happen if I did…which was the whole ----- reason I wanted to do it too.
So there we were, in the middle of the Richfield School gym3Actually, I’m pretty sure the table was on the north wall, at the east edge where the gym meets the hallway to the classrooms… scuffling over a stack of fraudulent ballots that I almost got into the drawing. But of course, being the big brother, 1SJ ultimately stopped me from doing exactly what he had just done.
Did his commitment to committing raffle tampering end there? Oh no, not at all. Later that night I tried to sneak back and finish the job, but he came sprinting in at the last second and darn near tackled me. That boy truly believed in his cause, that was for sure.
At that point I said “F*ck it” and gave up. You know why though? Because, it was true: I was a lucky little bastard, and I figured that all I needed was my singular entry to have my name drawn out of the sea of that cheater’s names. Joke’s gonna be on you, bro!
I wasn’t really that surprised when, lo and ----- behold, someone came and found us outside later to tell 1SJ that he had somehow overcome all odds and won himself a musical teddy bear.
Funnily enough, later in its ill-gotten life, that teddy bear’s battery cavity would go on to serve 1SJ very well as a hiding spot for various forms of illicit contraband . So I guess the joke ultimately was on the teddy bear, what with getting drugs stuffed up its butt like it were a Paul Frampton wannabe4Ah, yes, UNC Dept. of Physics & Astronomy’s most famous drug mule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Frampton#Drug_smuggling_conviction…
Anyways, the point of the story is, if you’re desperately in need of a holiday miracle, sometimes all you need is sheer grit and a little physical restraint to make it happen. And before you know it, you just might have yourself a merry little Christmas bear hitting them high notes for all the wrong reasons5Because, the drugs . All them drugs up its ass. Just so we’re clear.…
Content created on: 18 November 2020 (Wednesday)
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