missed it by that much

i was recently asked to be in one of those crazy radio contests. you know the kind: they're giving away this really amazing car, but to get it you have to stand with your hand on the car for as long as possible to prove that you're the most worthy of winning the car.

i always thought that radio stations had some prequalified list of nutjobs out there who are willing to give up their precious time to stand with their hand on a car. come to find out that if the prize is good enough, regular citizens like me will actually be crazy enough to sign up for something like this! yes, the candidate pool really does come from that large anonymous crowd of average joes (or josies).

now i know you're asking yourself, "self, what prize could be so good that julie would actually sign up to do anything so weird?" ok... the details:

my favorite station, 94.7, was holding a contest to win two tickets to see the police in atlantic city and spend the night at the borgata. the police... their own show... atlantic city... the borgata... just me and honey... you get the point.

the deal was that you had to be willing to sit at mattress discounters with your hand on a mattress and outlast the competition. the last one with his/her hand on the mattress would win the tickets and the hotel room (and, i'm assuming, the mattress.) i was on the 94.7 website, and, as a lark, i signed up to be entered into the pool of potential contestants. this is definitely worth the pain and boredom.

i never win anything, so i didn't give it another thought. fast forward to last week, when my phone came back from the sprint store after being out of commission for a week (that's an entirely different story). i charged it up and saw that i had a voicemail. it was the promotions guy from the radio station calling to see if i wanted to take part in the contest!!!!! woah!!! unfortunately, the message was a week old! he called the day after my cell phone died, and i didn't know about it until the following week!

aaauuuggghhh! i called back immediately and left him a message saying i was interested. i'm sure by that time they had already written me off as a no-go and filled their contestant pool, because the contest was last weekend and they never called me back beforehand.

bummer. i could have won!