"Please call us back as soon as possible so we can get your information and send over these tickets!" A heavy Midwestern accent says to my voicemail last evening.

The voicemail and the very nasally voice mentioned some sort of drawing I entered when I was visiting a friend in Milwaukee a few months ago. I tried to remember the drawing as I jotted down the phone number I was to call tor reach "Kayla" the girl with a voice that sound like she was wearing a clothespin on her nose.

I sat on my couch with the pen and slip of paper with the random digits inbetween my fingers rehashing every place I had been in that visit where I could have been naive enough to think I had an opportunity to win anything. But instead of dwelling I seized the moment and dialed the number and awaited someone to pick up.

I know. I know. I totally know what you're thinking. "BYRON! COME ON! This is too good to be true! You can't even think for a second that this isn't some sort of set up... some sort of ploy. Some sort of way to find out your personal information with a faux bribe! BYRON WAKE UP!"

That's the the thing you may or may not know about me. I'm pretty awake. But sometimes you just want to hope that something randomly exciting could be true. Like somewhere there HAS to be a lost Atlantis or the Bermuda Triangle DOES exist or Jake Gyllenhaal is TOTALLY gay. Sometimes it's just more fun to have that second that it is possible that something you weren't expecting and totally have always wanted to happen to you... could actually be happening. In that exact moment! Especially since that something could change your point of view of late.

"Hello? Sundance Vacations, this is Kayla." Says the pinched voice.

"Yes, um, I just received a call... that ... I won something?"

"Oh! Yes! You did! You are one of our lucky winners!"

"Well... how does this work...what do I have to do?" I hesitated. "This sounds too good to be true."

"Ohhhhh, no. It's true. You just need to come to our office and have a meeting with us for an hour. We will show you some of our properties we have available in other states that you can buy... and..."

"SO! Wait. I have to buy something to get this trip..." I interrupt annoyed that my Thai food was getting cold from this call.

"Well... yes... sorta... but it..."

"I'm not interested..."

"No, sir, wait! It's a free trip! You just..."

"Do you think I'm stupid?" I snap.

"No... I never said..." Her voice lowers to a whisper.

"Do you think that I don't know what this is about? Some sort of time sharing?"

"No... it's..."

"It's been a long year for me... I don't need people calling me during dinner to try to make me think I have things coming to me that aren't. This is bull-shit."

"But... it is a free trip all you have to do is..."

"No." I snap and hang up the phone.

As sit down and poke at my spring rolls I realize I was a bit harsh with her. She was probably some college student just doing her job. HELL! I've done phone sales before and I KNOW how hard it is.

But there is something about false hope. That feeling you get when all hopes are game and the minute you find out it's not going to happen: a free trip, getting a dream job or having a relationship that you were so willing to put the work in to actually succeed, feels like you just paid a million dollars for an non-returnable jacket that people say makes you look fat.

False hope is especially bad when you take out that lost hope on a cute girl named Kayla. Sorry Kayla.