The Golden Tot

It was a good day. It was Byron Nelson Friday and the Mavs had just secured a spot in the NBA finals, where a rematch agains the Miami Heat was looming.

While Debra and I were waiting for Kacie to arrive before heading out for a day at the Pavillion, I tentatively asked Debra if she wanted to go try to buy Mavericks tickets in the morning, since they were having a lottery. "Sure," she said. "What time?" Uh, this was the part I wanted to fluff over. "Well, they start giving lottery tickets at 8:30 am, so maybe leave at 7ish?" She made a face for just a split second before nodding and saying "ok..."

When Kacie arrived, I played the same game on her, expecting much different results...Kacie is not a big fan of lines, crowds or time wasting. She agreed right away, so I took the "yes" and broke the news about the starting time. Her eyes glazed over a little, but she didn't falter.

Off to the Byron Nelson we went. It was a long day on the links, so on the way home, we stopped at Sonic, where we ordered a ridiculous amount of food and a couple of "drink buddies," which is some kind of toy that sits on the edge of your drink. I don't know why. We must have sounded a little stupid..."I'll take a monkey, a pineapple guy and .... another monkey." We didn't know they came randomly in packs of three.

The Golden Tot

When we got home, we broke open the food and drink buddies. I think we ended up with nine of them, which is ridiculous. Whilst sorting our food and buddies, I found my pineapple guy. But it wasn't a pineapple guy. It was a Tot. As in Tater.

Kacie noticed that among our new friends there was a very special drink buddy. All wrapped up in separate packaging, he came with a small insert. “Congratulations," it read. "You have found the Golden Tot. The Golden Tot is the rarest and most valuable of all the drink buddies." 

I, of course, was extraordinarily excited to have found the rarest of all the drink buddies. I immediately knew The Tot was destined for good fortune, and that I would be along for the ride!

We had agreed to meet at my apartment at 7:30 to get to the arena. Not wanting to be pushy, I was careful not to bother the ladies all morning to make sure they were up and on their way. Kacie arrived and we waited for Debra.

When Debra arrived she clearly had woken up and left her house in a matter of minutes. She was wearing a strange Disney shirt from the 90’s, which Kacie and I just could not let go. We interrogated her endlessly about how she ended up wearing it. “It was the first thing in the drawer!” she said. We found this bizarre, as normally the things on the top of the drawer were the things most recently worn.

As we arrived at the American Airlines Center, still all atwitter about the Disney shirt, we realized what we were in for. After parking, we began the long trot to the end of the line…around the parking garage, back up the street across the street…all the way up the Katy Trail. It was quite the scene.

We got in line at 8:23 am, and it continued to grow behind us. I understand that there ended up being about 5,000 people who showed up to get lottery tickets, and the line was just under a mile long.

At that point, we pretty much felt it was hopeless. We were a little unclear on how the lottery worked and there were so many people that it pretty much seemed impossible that we would have the chance to buy tickets, since there was an rumor going around that only about the first 50 lottery winners would be able to get tickets. So….1% of us then…

As we waited for the lottery tickets to be handed out, our spirits were pretty high. Regardless of whether we won, it was a fun thing to do, being down there with all the fans, trying to be a part of something big.

It was then that I pulled from my pocket our lucky charm. The Golden Tot. I knew he was lucky. I knew he was destined for greatness. The Golden Tot was going to help us win that ticket lottery…and the Championship.

We started to perk up. Debra at some point decided if we won the chance to buy tickets, she was going to upgrade her Longhorn tattoo to include “Texas Forever.” It’s one of those things you say, when there’s a slim chance it might happen and a slim chance you might have done it anyway.

They started handing out the tickets at 8:30 am and kept handing them out until they were gone. There were two sets of tickets, red ones starting at the very beginning of the line and blue ones starting about halfway up the line. We got ours (Blue: #259051, #259052 & 259053) then anxiously waited for what came next.

Once all the tickets were distributed, we were herded back over to the front of the arena and crammed into a parking lot where they were going to do the drawing. So here we were, 5,000 people in a parking lot.

While waiting for them to draw, we tried to figure out how it was going to work. It was too much mass chaos to draw number after number, so we learned that the drawing would be set up so a single ticket was drawn and that lottery ticket holder would then become the first person in the line to buy tickets. For example, if lottery ticket # 250 was drawn, that person would be first in line. Lottery ticket holder #251 would be second, and so on.

While we were waiting, a lady who was there with her daughter, tried to convince Kacie to trade tickets with her, so that there would be a better chance of winning a spot in line. To which Kacie responded “But what if mine is the winner…?”

We rubbed and kissed The Golden Tot for luck as they drew the winning lottery ticket. Because the lottery itself was so poorly executed, no one could hear Guy on Bullhorn who announced the number. The fans, all crammed together in a small space started getting anxious and pushy.

Debra, Kacie and I began to feel fear. We wanted this ordeal to be over. As the lucky number started to trickle through the masses, we struggled to hear it. What was it? 259…something.

WHAT IS IT?!

259147 is the number we were hearing, which was a total bummer, since it was about 100 people behind us in the line.

But then, we starting hearing what sounded like 259014. Our ears perked up, as that gave us a slim chance of ticket purchase.

WHAT IS IT?!

It was at this point of hopeful hysteria that I heard it: 259047. Then I heard it again. And again. A shot of motherly adrenaline surged through me. I grabbed Kacie and Debra and firmly pulled them through the crowd, where I found an official looking man.

“What is the ticket number?” I asked.

“259047.”

My mind went into overdrive and I did remedial calculations. Just before completely flipping out, I asked one more question:

Me with lucky ticket
#459051 and The Tot

“Red or Blue?”

“Blue.” He confirmed.

Oh My God. We Did It.

I’m not even sure the girls knew what was happening as I grabbed back ahold of them and started pushing my way to the ticket window. We passed through a set of barricades and there we were:

5th, 6th & 7th out of 5,000 people, in line to buy tickets.

You can imagine what happened in the next few minutes. People lined the barricades pelting us with requests. One man offered Kacie $300 for her lottery ticket. Others were asking us to buy tickets for them. People wanted those tickets. Real bad.

One couple just jumped the barricade and cut into the line about 10 people back.  When the people they cut in front of summoned security, the couple became indignant, saying that they had camped out the night before, and it's not fair that people who arrived at 8:30 were getting tickets.  Uh, lady, it's a lottery.  That's the point...

Kacie, Debra and I, at that moment, mostly felt shock, but we were terribly excited. We were giggling, repeating that we couldn’t believe what had transpired over the last two hours. What are the chances?! How did this happen?! Over and over, I kept saying it was The Tot. The Golden Tot.

We replayed the morning in our minds: If Debra had stopped to find a less ridiculous T-shirt, we wouldn’t have won. If we had gone earlier, like originally suggested, we wouldn’t have won. If I had made us stop for a sausage McMuffin, we wouldn’t have won. We didn’t dare speculate what would have happened if he hadn’t gone to Sonic, where we acquired The Golden Tot.

Debra, Kacie and I made it to the
big boy line.

It was a great moment.  

The ticket windows finally opened, and within minutes we had secured tickets to the first two games of the NBA finals. It would be less than half an hour before the games were sold out.

All was right with the world.

With the tickets securely in our purses, clutched securely in our arms, we realized we now had to trapse through a crowd of angry, tired, ticketless fans with thousands of dollars worth of tickets on us.

We asked for a policeman to take us back to the car. They said they were too busy. This was upsetting, but we thought we could make it. I think we ran the last few steps, got inside and locked the doors.

Our Loot.

We spread out our booty on the console. It was beautiful.

  

Once slightly calm and collected, we stopped at a gas station for caffeine and actual lottery tickets. We texted and called our family and friends. No one was near the level of excited we expected them to be. “Um, hello people! We were a part of a 1% today! It’s a big deal!” To this day, I can't get anyone to understand how unlikely and amazing it was.  But that's okay.

Me, Kacie and the Terry Tot.

Of course, I couldn’t let it go that I felt The Tot was directly related to our luck. I wanted to take no chances with my lucky charm, so I strung him up on a chain and wore him as a necklace as I watched each game. Sometimes I dressed him up like Jason Terry and called him the Terry Tot.

The rest of the story, you already know (well, except the part where Debra and I stalked tattoo parlors all over Addison that morning until we found an open one to fulfill her “Texas Forever” promise). The Mavs won their first NBA Title against Miami in game six. It was redemption for 2006, and for everyone that said Dirk wasn’t a big-game player and for everyone that said the Mavs were too old and too rag-tag. It was a great time for the city of Dallas and the Mavericks. Dirk, Cuban and Kidd could pretty much bring me to tears at any moment in the week that followed.

I know that probably Rick Carlisle and the boys did all the hard work. But I can’t help wonder how it all would have played out….without The Golden Tot.

The Golden Tot, doing what a drink buddy does best.