Winner or Not, He Loves Mail
Rodney Dangerfield claimed that he once opened one of those sweepstakes letters and was informed: “You may already be a loser.”
It might as well say that for me, because the outcome is always predictable. But I bite anyway. True, the cost is a postage stamp, but how else can you get that much excitement for 22 cents?
What hooks me is opening the mailbox and finding that personalized letter. I know, you’re already saying it’s all done by a computer. But I prefer to overlook the fact that certain words and lines in the letter are in bolder type than others.
I mean, the letter I got from a certain magazine the other day not only began “DEAR MR. LARSEN,” but then launched into a little preamble telling me how I could win a grand prize of $50,000 and could get $5,000 a day extra for each day my potentially winning entry beat the deadline.
I know they have me in mind, because one of the ensuing lines begins: “AND IF I WERE YOU, MR. LARSEN, I’D MAIL THOSE” (cards today).
And no sooner was I making plans for the $100,000 certified check that “could make 1985 one of the best years the LARSEN FAMILY HAS EVER HAD,” than another envelope arrived.
O, my cup runneth over. This time the siren song was from one of those outfits that offer discounts on magazines and that periodically sponsor sweepstakes.
Beat Deadline
“Yes, David Larsen, you are guaranteed five million dollars. . . . “ If I am the grand prize winner. Plus an extra $5 million by beating the Gold Seal deadline date.
Yawn. Don’t they know that I am already in the running for the other sweepstakes? And I regularly scratch the rub-and-reveal cards offered by McDonald’s, or whomever, even though the most I have ever gotten for my efforts has been small bags of fries.
As for the sweepstakes, I have been assured in newspaper articles that even if I don’t buy anything, my entry has the same chance of winning that a buyer’s does.
Find Gold Seal
I sincerely doubt this, and I find it mentally taxing to locate the gold seal enclosed in a special small envelope and paste it onto a star on my entry.
I know I should quit while I’m behind, but I persist. After all, the snowstorm of material inside the envelope from the magazine discount house included this time an ominous warning: “In the months ahead, many will be dropped from our regular mailing list.”
This simply cannot be permitted to happen. I just couldn’t go cold turkey.
And I know of no methadone program for sweepstakes withdrawal.
What’s that you say, a state lottery is coming? It just isn’t the same thing, not without the letter.
