Dodged a Bullet...

So I have a tendency to make stupid bets. Why I can’t just make them for cash, I don’t know. Me? I have to get creative. Lucky for BPDP, sometimes I don’t come up with the creative bet until it’s too late. A few years ago when the Boston Red Sox (my second favorite apparel-named baseball team) completely dismantled BPDP’s beloved Cardinals, I came up with a doozy about 3 games into the sweep, at which point it was the mercy my mother instilled in me that just let BPDP and his team self-destruct in relative peace.

But the bet would have been a good one - Whomever lost the bet (BPDP, remember) would have to go to Wal-Mart on a Saturday when they were busiest and buy these items, and these items only:

A box of Kleenex
A family-size jug of hand lotion
A Hilary Duff poster

And the loser (BPDP) couldn’t tell the cashier or any one that he (BPDP) had lost a bet. And when the cashier said “Have a nice day” he was to reply “Oh, I will. Believe me.”

So once again, I find myself in the position of being in the middle of a stupid bet. Every year at the newspaper, we enter the Illinois Press Association contest. We usually gather some hefty awards too. In the past 5 years, I have won 20 myself, which isn’t me bragging... I’m just pointing out that this is an editorial contest, and I don’t work in editorial. All right, I am bragging.

One of my 4 nominations this time around, a category I took first in last year - Single Page Design - had some in-house competition from Associate Editor Mark Malone. And he was determined to take the reigning champ down. So began the trash talking, the chest thumping, and that damn bet...

If I won, Mark - a die-hard White Sox fan - was to wear a Cubs jersey and hat and sing karaoke at the VFW, where the crowd is a little rowdy. The song I picked for him to sing to me was Christina Aguleria’s “Ain’t No Other Man.” It would have been great. But the flip-side is that it was possible that I would lose, in which case I was to wear a Bears jersey (I do not apologize for being a Packers fan) and sing Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.”

Oh, they just loved that around the office. Everyone couldn’t wait for the big day - we had so many people interested in this that we thought we should seriously charge a cover and donate to a local charity.

Well, the awards were this past weekend and let me just say...

I’m a Barbie Girl. In a Barbie World.

ah.... crap.

Since we initially brought up the bet, neither of us had spoken out loud about it. We just sat in quiet and wondered what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. And then my personal life went in the toilet, and I found myself in a position where the usual self-deprecating McGone wasn’t feeling much like having fun with himself. Honestly, I wasn’t going to make Mark go through with it. Not that it mattered because I made peace with the fact that I placed lower than him weeks ago.

Mark’s my hero. He told me yesterday he wasn’t going through with it either. Now I just have to hear the comments from my co-workers... I swear, in these past few days I’ve heard “Barbie” more than the stockboy at Toys-R-Us.

This post is more for my benefit... I have to remember the dread I felt this past month as the Cardinals stand at the top of their division and BPDP will no doubt be gloating if they start making it through the playoffs, especially now that my mighty White Sox have burned out. He’ll gloat and I’ll want to take a stand against him. But no more stupid bets, no matter how creative.

Besides, I think I saw BPDP at Wal-Mart last weekend buying the kleenex, lotion and Duff poster anyway.