Luckiest kid I know

Last week, Mark ran in the school jog-a-thon. To adults, the jog-a-thon is an opportunity to donate cash toward new computers for the school. To kids, it was an opportunity to collect raffle tickets and prizes (jogging was just the necessary evil to earn those tickets).

I saw one of the big prizes in the cafeteria last week.

"Mom!" Mark yelled, excitedly. "That's the bike I'm trying to win!"

I smiled and wished him luck. It was a shiny, cool new bike, but there's a thousand kids in his school. You can figure out the odds of him winning one of the grand prizes (I didn't want to burst his bubble).

Well, danged if he didn't do it! I was sitting at work, reading the online school newsletter, when I saw the following line under "Raffle winners:"

"Boy's bike: Mark Dinsdale"

I started laughing out loud, right there in my office, all by myself.

I'm telling you, he is the luckiest kid I've ever met in my life! (Of course, as my friend Nicky pointed out, "Good, he should be! He deserves whatever he wins to make up for his first five years.") He's won homemade quilts (he decorated a square), Padres tickets, photo sessions, even a whole week of baseball camp. I guess I shouldn't be surprised he won the bike, but I was.

(And let me tell you how hard this makes the whole "life isn't fair--you don't get always get what you want" lesson. It's hard to teach fairness and not to expect everything when -- well, when you win everything!)

Anyway, I was thrilled for him, but he was even more thrilled. He had to wait a couple days to ride it home, but when he did, he was so proud. And the bike is bigger than his previous one -- I hadn't really noticed he'd outgrown his bike until he got the new, bigger one.

So here he is, the world's luckiest boy: