Luck and the Lakes

Once a year I volunteer at a community festival, in a booth sponsored by my work. It's down at The Lakes, and it amazes me that PEOPLE WILL CONSISTENTLY STAND IN LINE TWENTY MINUTES FOR THE CHANCE TO WIN TRINKETS.

 If we offered a table of the same items ("Floating Key Chain" and "Dish Sponge (With Company Logo)" and "Convenience Clip"), nobody would take them, but we humans find luck to be irresistible, and setting up a prize wheel with an adorable company secretary playing Vanna White (that's me, naturally), makes perfectly reasonable, otherwise content citizens stand in line in the hot sun by the thousands to win things they know that they will never use.

I love it, because I adore people-watching and because I like brightening people's days and getting hundreds, often thousands, of chances, to experiment what works. Do guys like smiles or laughs better? Do mothers like it when I pay better attention to them or to their children? Do teenage girls like to be complimented on their shirts or on their hair? Do little boys like to be called, "buddy," and do little girls like to be called, "sweetie" or do they prefer "little man" and "little lady"?
I am given a fresh slate every thirty seconds, to experiment with laughs and eye contact and body language. I grew up profoundly verbose and equally shy, which made me a bit of a social derelict, and in adulthood I have never stopped trying to grow better and use my strengths to my advantage. I am so glad that I was homeschooled, because it gave me so many chances to be better prepared intellectually and spiritually to be a good employee, person, and lady; but I am also grateful for my annual run at The Lakes, when I get to experiment with all that I think I have learned in the last year, to immediate results.

Is any of that cavalier?