Antiques Roadshow Tickets. Trash or treasure?
I’m a loser.
Of things that is.
I’ve lost a $10,000 check and diamond rings.
Can’t remember if it was the $10,000 college tuition check or a $100 insurance refund — but I vowed never to let a piece of mail go in the trash un-opened.
Well . . .
* * *
I don’t watch much television except HGTV. The Property Bros, Fixer Upper, Flip or Flop, Beachfront Bargain. I’m all idiot savant about it.
The one exception being PBS’ Antiques Roadshow. I know. The show that’s been on since Jesus walked the earth. I hadn’t watched it for years, but for some reason — maybe because I’m now antique status — we started watching it again a few years ago.
Monday nights, 8 pm. Sacred.
“We need to go,” I said to my husband last summer. Looking on the PBS site, I learned that you don’t just show up with your grandmother’s faux shark tooth bracelet. No ma’am. In January, you select from the cities scheduled for the next season and enter a lottery. Winners to be notified in May.
Fastforward to this May.
The email said I was a WINNER. And that two tickets would arrive by mail.
Great.
Except the arriving by mail part.
You’d think with my sketchy history of tossing away life savings in unopened mail, my guard would be up.
* * *
Last weekend, I reread the email and noticed the tickets should arrive two weeks prior to the event. Which meant, I should have seen them by now. Uh oh.
New Jamie didn’t panic. She waited for the mail to come on Monday. Surely it would be there.
No mail delivered to our basket on Monday.
No mail delivered on Tuesday. At this point, I did something I’d never done. Went down to our post office to ask if they were holding our mail. Had my mail basket finally been condemned by the postal service? It is pretty beat up.
“No. There was nothing back there for you,” the clerk replied with a smile.
New Jamie didn’t panic. She went outside to the trash and rifled through five large bags and a few smaller grocery bags on our driveway. No luck.
Surely it will be in Wednesday’s mail.
Nope.
That’s when I knew.
I’d thrown it away unopened.
You know the saying I turned my house upside down looking for . . . . I did that and shook it sideways too.
Nothing. Well, a lot of cr@p like bills but no tickets.
In tears, I was so angry.
Here’s the irony.
I don’t really care about antiques. Well, except my husband. I don’t have anything of value to take. If I hadn’t been selected for tickets in the first place, I’d have been a tad disappointed but thought we’ll get it one of these years.
It was that my unfocused, mindless shuffling of paper mistake cost me a weekend away with John. A weekend staying at one of my favorite hotels. It cost me the possibility of meeting a Keno.
For the love of Primitive Windsor Chairs Painted with the Alaskan Flag in Gold Relief!
This called for OYKP. On Your Knees Prayer.
Bending down on the carpet, I clasped hands with fingers entwined.
Dear God. People are in heartbreakingly courageous battles with cancer and others have seemingly insurmountable financial woes. All so very worthy of your power and might. But dear Jesus, if those tickets have not left this property in a garbage truck and aren’t sitting in the Morgan County landfill — please help me.
Search the garbage again.
Hmm.
I got up, headed outside and went through the trash.
First was a small bag containing Chick-Fil-A wrappers. Second bag was bigger. Some mail was on top. Took out a nondescript envelope with a odd stamp. Junk.
Then I saw station call letters as the return address. Opening the envelope, seeing a clock and old stuff —
I thought — cr@p — a letter advertising one of those foreclosure sales on mountain property.
Then I turned it over.
God hears our prayers.
My prayers.
Even those that seem to be taking a bit long to answer.
As far as the Roadshow, I don’t really have anything of value to take, but I’ve got tickets.
And that will make me smile, forever.
Anybody have anything I could take?
