Snapple Fact Number 196: If you doubled one penny every day for 30 days, you would have $5,368,709.12.
We won the lottery before my sister was born. Just before dial-up, but after Snapple Facts. When school cafeterias served peanut butter with their jelly.
It was early summer when we won – then lost – then won again the Canada Dry NHL lotto, a 250 thousand dollar grand prize.
Here’s how you play: Like a Snapple Fact, every 2-liter of Canada Dry contains a message under the cap. Instead of trivia, it’s a lotto ticket that lists a hockey team, and a number of games. If THAT team wins Lord Stanley’s Cup in THAT number of games, then you won the Canada Dry Jackpot.
250 thousand dollars doesn’t sound like a lot today, but in the age of cable hot boxes, and when most of our furniture was recycled from people’s street garbage, it was The American Dream.
Colorado in 4, read the cap.
If the Colorado Avalanche swept their opponent in 4 games, that jackpot would be ours: I could have at least ten new Sega Genesis games and our whole apartment would have brand new furniture.
Snapple Fact number 423: U.S. paper currency is actually a blend of cotton and linen.
Then the impossible happened: Colorado made it to the finals, and won game one against the Florida Panthers. The great Patrick Roy was a brick wall in net and led the Avalanche to a second win, then a third, and a lotto-winning fourth. A clean sweep. A 250 thousand dollar clean sweep.
I held the cap in my hands: Colorado in 4. Dad saw it, called mom and we all jumped up and down in our living room. We were rich!
Then we lost the cap.
Snapple Fact Number 931: The nothingness of a black hole generates a sound in the key of B flat.
Surprise: when it came time to mail in the cap, we couldn’t find it. We turned the apartment upside-down and nothing, no where. It was Baba Yaga’s cursed cabin, sprouting legs and running away.
Then, in true Soviet fashion, hopelessness gave way to indifference. Maybe we never had the winning cap. A group hallucination. Who needs new furniture and Sega games anyway?
One episode of the X-Files and two TGIF’s later: a crash, then a shout. Dad dropped a knife on the kitchen floor. And where it fell, it pointed directly to a little green bottle cap, under the reclaimed legs of our old kitchen table. A bottle cap that said Colorado in 4. We weren’t collectively crazy, and our little cap came back from the land of the lost. Soviet solipsism was once again replaced by the American Dream.
Snapple Fact Number 1489: “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was written in 1908 by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer, both of whom had never been to a baseball game.
The US Government’s great achievement: certified mail. Like Stan to Marshall Mathers, we checked to make sure the address was written perfect, took a collective deep breath and mailed our good fortune back to Canada’s Ginger Ale giant.
Fourth grade was done and summer underway. Somewhere between an episode of Hey Arnold and Snick Snickly, as I was sneaking my second Cosmic Brownie of the day, mom brought up a letter from the Canada Dry folks. And it looked official, like there was a check inside. It also said “check inside” on the envelope.
A big golden spotlight beamed from the envelope as dad slowly opened it. Any second the doorbell would ring and Ed McMahon would be holding a 250 thousand dollar check.*
We held our breath and mom read the letter inside:
“Congratulations on winning the Canada Dry NHL playoff sweepstakes. Enclosed is your check. You were one of 3,379 sweepstake winners. Please accept your share of the $250,000 jackpot: $73.98 and an enclosed coupon for 10% off of your next purchase.
“Thank you for being a Canada Dry customer.”
Snapple Fact number 4044: Who needs new furniture and Sega games anyway?
* This BLEW MY MIND. While researching this piece, I found out that Ed McMahon never worked for the Publishers Clearing House, and never once delivered a giant check to anyone’s door. If you also share this memory, we found another glitch in the Matrix.
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