T GAMBLE: The birth of the T Gamble special

Most of my adult life I have had the propensity to go shopping and end up with the wrong thing. Now understand, shopping is probably the wrong word to use, as I do not shop. I’d rather be buried alive in a fire ant bed than to actually shop. But I do go places with a set agenda to buy a certain item, and only that item, and then find myself returning home with what I think is the right item only to discover it is not exactly what I thought it was. I am sort of the human shopping version of the McDonald’s drive-thru order.

As an example, I will go to the store to pick up a two-liter Pepsi. I need only one, but the price is good so I will decide to buy three or four. Then I get home and they are all cherry-flavored Pepsi, which I don’t particularly like. Or I go to get a 12-pack of Coke but get home and find out they are Diet Coke. I’d rather eat banana-flavored oatmeal than drink a Diet Coke.

Once I went to town and bought peaches to make a homemade peach milk shake. They had no fresh ones, so I bought canned ones. They were spiced peaches. unbeknownst to me. Trust me when I say this: A spicy peach milk shake is not particularly good.

My kids call this type event a T Gamble special. It is somewhat disconcerting when you do something stupid so often that your kids give it a name. I once went to Vegas on a golf trip … at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. After a round of golf and a few rounds of margaritas, I went to the pro shop of this fancy, schmancy golf club to buy a nice golf shirt. I looked all over and saw very little that I really liked, but then I saw this one tiny area with a few shirts off to the side and saw one shirt I thought was perfect. I got an extra-large and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning I got up to play golf, decided to wear my super cool new shirt, and hurriedly pulled it over my head. It fit like a tourniquet. I was in a strait jacket. I could not lift my arms high enough to take it off. I had to call my roommate for help getting it off. It turned out it was a woman’s extra-large golf shirt. I don’t know what disturbs me most about this, the fact I did not notice the small size when I bought it or the fact that the shirt I liked best was a woman’s shirt.

I couldn’t take the damned thing home as my wife would kill me if I bought her an extra-large shirt, or worse, decide I’d been with an extra-large woman. Neither would be good. So I left a slightly stretched out new woman’s golf shirt on my hotel room bed when I checked out.

Recently, Fred’s in Dawson closed. They had everything 80 percent off. I went to get cheap reading glasses, 2.5. I bought about 6 pairs of good-looking black framed glasses, all for the price of one. I failed to notice they were women’s glasses with fake diamond sparkles on each side.

I later went to court and had to argue a complicated motion that would either make or break my case. I had very good case law on my side and a good argument. I stood up to argue my side, put on my glasses to read the judge the case citation I was quoting from, and my client looked at me like I was insane. The judge peered at me with a rather funny look, and the court reporter seemed befuddled. I made a very good argument but I don’t think the judge heard a thing as he was too busy looking at my sparkles and wondering what in the heck was wrong with me.

I suspect my client wanted a refund. But I could see real good, and we won the case. Now I’m now thinking about becoming the Elton John of courtroom lawyers. Yep, just another T. Gamble special.