In response to our frequent offers of simpleton cash prizes, DJ Quickening of Australia writes:

Dear simpleton,

my name is stewart

i am 23yrs old

i have 27 teeth

and have currently made $28 from the toothfairy.

my personal sob story is pretty sad but true :-(

at 22 you wouldn't expect santa to be still bringing you presents on Christmas...
well the case is that he was!

my little brother (aged 9 today) has alway believed in santa, and for this reason my father decided to keep giving us all presents from santa so that my bro was happy with his decision to accept santa as real. This was great because dad usually spent around $100 on each of us for a prezzie from santa (usually the best we got each year). and believe me this was something i wanted to last a long time!!!

so every night i would read my bro a bedtime story and somewhere in there involve santa and keep reminding him that santa was real (you would too for an extra prezzie each year) my sisters would also do the same thing...

you are probably asking yourself (how is this a sob story, apart from the fact that stewart is sad enough to scab $100 out of his dad each year)....

well...
3 days ago it happened!

some little schhol boy friend of my brothers decided to open his big mouth and make my bro realize that santa was fake!

we tried to advise my bro that this was a lie.. (well..wouldn't you) but now he has put his mind to rest knowing that santa is fake (that he is dad) and has told dad of this...

so now i am totally sad that we are missing out on over $100 worth of prezzies this year from santa.. and all we can really do now is...

SOB!!!!!

and write stories like this to win prizes!!!

Sincerely,

DJ Quickening

Alone among the many correspondents who write in every day in search of cash prizes, DJ Quickening seems to have grasped the rules of the game. The simpleton cash prize is awarded to the the contestant who can provide the most pathetically heart-wrenching tale of personal tragedy (we mean "pathetic" in its original Athenian sense). Like the 1950s TV show "Queen For A Day," our cash prizes bring a little sunlight into the lives of the downtrodden, people who are intimate with grief. Let all those readers who continue to send in emails bearing the sole message "Cash prize," be advised: This is how you win. Send us your sad story, and if it's tragic enough, we'll send you a cash prize.

But DJ Quickening has understood a further element crucial in swaying our panel of judges. This is the odd literary element. In DJ Quickening's case, the pathos, the truly heart-rending tragedy, is not found in his trivial story of Christmas gone bad, but in the back story implicit in his tale. 23 years old and still living at home, bamboozling his nine-year-old brother for a few paltry gifts... It all conjures up some disturbing images, of DJ quickening still living in his paneled childhood room Down Under, defering adulthood year after year as he dreams of Christmas glory. I don't know much about Australia, and for all I know the Southern Hemisphere's reversed-seasons may mean the Aussies are just now entering their Christmas season. If so, it's time to look back on DJ Quickening's hermetic little life, and hope that this year he may finally get the happiness he deserves....

February 25, 1999: Tough Questions
Your advice requested
February 24, 1999: Reader Mail
Volume 28: Booze, Rye and George Washington
February 23, 1999: Answer man
Our first-ever advice column
February 19-22, 1999: Absolut simpleton
Rolled in the cold
February 18, 1999: Loco-grams
Found messages from the marginally insane
February 17, 1999: Dear simpleton
Reader Mail, volume 27

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