Coincidence

Last night I went to see the Streb SLAM show, that takes place in the warehouse where I take my trapeze classes. It was delightful.

The coincidence is this: There was a raffle with four prizes. The flying trapeze class, the pop action class, and the gift certificate for a restaurant closeby were all won by the three women closest to me.

Was it that the audience was all male but for three women sprinkled around? Not so. These three women were also my friends.

Was it that I used my acquaintance with some of the performers to bias the results of the raffle? Not so.

The explanation is more mundane: the kids who sold the raffle tickets and drew them from the pot hadn't shuffled properly. The winning tickets were 4213403, 4213401 and 4213384. The first two were bought by N and S within seconds of each other. The third one... that's a coincidence. Unless M noticed that nobody was checking the numbers, and cunningly declared herself the winner so that the real winner didn't bother looking at his ticket. I am impressed.

But consider this: M was the fourth winner. Everybody had had the time to look at their tickets thrice. I myself had time to check my ticket number before M screamed with excitement. It was 4213385. I had bought six tickets and given three to M, one to T and one to K. One of those I gave to M was the winner.

Later in the evening, M was able to convince N to trade her flying trapeze lesson against the restaurant gift certificate. That was cunning. N was so thrilled that she had won something "for the first time in [her] life" that she didn't mind what it was: "It could have been a pencil, I would have been as happy."

As for myself, I felt proud to have brought twenty people to the show (out of an audience of about eighty), to have won by proxy three fourth of the prizes, and finally to be able to feed excellent cheese to the ten friends who ended up at my place: the cheese store on Bedford Avenue was just a few minutes away from closing when I passed in front.

Allthis to say that maybe it is time to switch career.