On Saturday, I went out with the parents to see the musical revue Swing! (No, it wasn’t that exciting; that was the name of the show: “Swing!”) It was put together by a local arts company that gets its funding in part through admissions fees, “dinner and a show” tickets and silent auctions.
For those who don’t know how silent auctions work, it’s basically just a bunch of items laid out on tables with sheets of paper in front of them. People wander around, see something they like and put their bid on the sheet. You want that thing more than they do, so you put down a higher bid and so on. (At a show last year, little brother Justin won some tickets—six games of bowling for five bucks—that eventually expired because… we never went bowling.) But this year, they had some different prizes being auctioned off.
At the beginning of the intermission, the announcer got up on stage and asked all the men, “What day is it on Monday?” (It was Valentine’s Day. I yelled out “Monday!” He didn’t acknowledge my answer.) Apparently, there were three items that “would make great Valentine’s Day gifts”—thus the pop quiz—and he wanted to point out that with a few minutes left before the auction was over, the highest bids on all three… were women. Hey, as far as I’m concerned, they should appreciate the sacrifice the men are making with dinner and a musical revue. After all, some might consider power tools extremely romantic…
