All Creatures Great and Small

[[Oliver]] and I completed our second round of raffle ticket selling at the [[Charlottetown Farmer’s Market]] this morning — we were selling $2 tickets on a gift basket, with proceeds to the Home and School.

To be honest, I was dreading the experience: flashbacks to the door-to-door hawking of oranges and grapefruit for the Senior Band trip to Washington, DC. Or the time I went canvassing for OXFAM and gave up after the first door I had slammed in my face. Or, further back, days and days and days traipsing through the neighbourhoods of the Golden Horseshoe selling subscriptions to The Hamilton Spectator in the semi-annual contests of paperboys.

But I’m the treasurer, and if the treasurer can’t get out there and sell tickets, well what hope do we have of getting anyone else to sign on. So we showed up at our post at 10:00 a.m. last Saturday for our 90 minute shift, and repeated again this week.

And you know what: it was loads of fun.

All we needed to do, I found out, was stand there and wait for everyone Oliver and I have ever met to walk by our booth (it turns out that Oliver and I together know a lot of people).

So we sold tickets to teachers and principals. Spinners and weavers. Slices of silverorange and their parents. Innumerable Prince Street School alumni. One Member of Parliament and one Senator. To all of our regular market vendors. To the occasional OpenCorporations supporter. Loads of friends and neighbours. To Leo Cheverie, of course. And even to Tim Banks, bless his heart.

We discovered that there’s a sort of cabal of of former raffle ticket sellers who, having gone through the experience themselves resolve to forever buy tickets from others (thank you all!).

Oliver, as you might imagine if you’ve met him, is a born salesperson: he knows no fear, is tireless, and has social skills that eclipse those of almost everyone I know.

The draw took place on the third shift, so I’m not sure who won. But I imagine we’ll be back next near for the next round, free of dread.

And I expect that, as newly-minted cabal members, we’ll be buying a lot of raffle tickets this year.