Eye on the Prize

Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of female writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find here each week, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.

I was in first grade when my elementary school, St. Leo the Great, announced a fundraiser to sell candy bars. Siblings would unite, competing together for prizes to be awarded at the spring festival. Top honors? A 19-inch color television. 

There may have been only three of us — a disadvantage at an Irish-Catholic school where siblings were in greater supply than rosaries — but my brother, my sister and I were determined to win, and we’d stop at nothing. 

Our biggest rivals were the McCarthy kids. The McCarthys were responsible for restocking the inventory of any family needing extra boxes of candy bars. To an outsider, it seemed that Mrs. McCarthy — doting, hands-on mother that she was — was providing a selfless service, but we knew better. The McCarthys had roughly 184 children, so beating them would be difficult for anyone, but given the fact that they were tracking everyone’s sales, their defeat seemed impossible. They had numbers, but we McDonalds had grit. They were many, but we were scrappy, and our tactics were ruthless.

Our first strategy was an obvious one: We’d sell candy bars at Bud’s Tavern, the bar our parents owned. We knew from experience that inebriated customers were the best customers, but as the school bulletin board tracking the sales tallies made clear, we needed to cast a wider net.

Our parents were part of a bowling league, so every week we spent one night running around the alley while they played. During the Great Candy Bar Competition of 1988, these visits became tactical sales campaigns. Our parents’ league mates — an amalgamation of aunts, uncles and family friends — were the easiest marks, but if we were going to keep up with the McCarthys of the world, we had to expand our empire. While our parents were bowling, we’d divide and conquer, quickly discerning who would be most sympathetic to our cause. It was tricky business. If you made the rookie mistake of making first contact with a crotchety cheapskate from a group of 10, he might spit at you to scram before you ever had the opportunity to proffer your goods to the rest of the team.

The key was to pinpoint the fun-loving member of each team. He was the guy who would throw his arm around your shoulder, shout at his buddies to give the cute kid a few bucks, and not let up until everyone had contributed something. He’d make a fuss about the uniform — we always wore the school uniform when we were selling; it was a clincher — and his glassy eyes would struggle to focus, but he’d give you five or 10 bucks and tell you to keep the change. Keeping the change was the Holy Grail of candy sales; it meant more chocolate rations to be added to your personal stockpile at home.

By contrast, there were players to be avoided. The worst violation you could make was to interrupt a bowler in the middle of keeping score, their fat fingers fumbling to maneuver a tiny pencil as they scratched numbers into precise boxes. Hell hath no fury like a bowling captain interrupted. These guys would bark at you and, in some cases, threaten to report you to management. We couldn’t afford mistakes like that. We had a TV to win.

Our bowling alley was a goldmine for sales, but it still wasn’t enough. So each night, our mom would taxi us to bars and bowling alleys within a 10-mile radius. She’d wait outside with the car running as the three of us — ages 6, 10 and 11 — would scurry into dark smoke-filled barrooms and blinking neon-lit bowling alleys and sell, sell, sell. 

We were neck-and-neck with the McCarthys as the festival drew near. I’d never wanted something as badly as I wanted that television. We had a television at home, of course, a behemoth console TV that Mr. T would’ve struggled to shift forward mere inches, but the idea of a second television seemed a nearly unimaginable extravagance. Maybe our parents would let us put it upstairs. We could watch Punky Brewster and ALF by ourselves! We’d be living in the lap of luxury!

In the end, we sold more than 1,200 candy bars, but the McCarthys sold one box more than us. They took home the TV, and we were left with the second-prize winnings: an automatic typewriter. Goodbye, dreams of a rich and famous lifestyle.

I don’t know if it was a result of seeing our crestfallen expressions or if it was because, even as grownups, my parents knew what a stupid prize a typewriter was, but they promptly pulled aside the principal and asked for the receipt. We left the festival with our winnings — and the ability to return it to the Circuit City from whence it came. 

The next day, my parents returned the typewriter for a full refund, but they didn’t buy us a TV. Instead, they came home with a brand-new Nintendo Entertainment System Power Set, complete with an NES Zapper for shooting birds in Duck Hunt and the highly coveted Power Pad for World Class Track Meet. It was, perhaps, the greatest gift we’d ever received, and the fact that we had earned it ourselves with months of braving bars and bowling alleys, drunkards and deviants made it that much sweeter.

Email arts@nashvillescene.com