“Well guess what Diane!” the morning radio DJ says. “May is Money Month here on the Itchy In The Down There show, and you just won $500!”
“Oh my God,” Diane says over the sound effects (farts, Jimmy Walker saying “Dy-No-Mite,” the sound of steel bending in Tower 2). “I’ve never won anything before!”
“How’s it feel?” DJ Itchy asks.
Diane is silent.
“Diane?”
“Never,” she whispers, almost inaudible under the sound bite from a Mel Gibson voicemail to his wife. “Not once.”
“Diane?”
“I’m 52,” she says. “What rewards? What accomplishments? 52 years, and all I can say I’ve achieved in life is a radio DJ once threw me five hundred bucks. And that’s pure random chance. Not the result of anything I’ve done. Just because you happened to dial a bunch of numbers. My God, I’ve let it all slip away.”
“Hey, it’s not random chance. You had to enter your work phone number on our website to win, right?”
“No,” Diane says. “No, I didn’t do that. I’m just temping at this desk.”
“Oh,” DJ Itchy says. “Oh God.”
“Oh God!” Diane sobs. “I didn’t win, did I?”
“Diane!” DJ Itchy says. “Diane don’t hang up!”
Diane disconnects the call midway through a sob.
Unsure what to do, because what can he do, DJ Itchy slowly presses a control board button and plays the sound clip from ‘Terms of Endearment’ where Shirley MacLaine is crying and repeating “I’m so stupid! I’m so stupid!” just after Debra Winger dies.
Happy Diane’s Never Won Anything Before Day!
