Honesty is not the Best Policy

 Insurance company Odds On is once again reminding people that honesty is not the best policy. When 11 year old Minnesota resident Nick Smith attended the Shattuck Vs. The World tournament hockey game with his identical twin brother Nate, and his father, he decided to enter his name into the drawing for a participant to take a $50,000 shot in the halftime show. We've all done it before. Spotting the sign for the contest while standing in the lineup for the concession stand to purchase another overpriced hot dog and a bag of kettle corn. What do you have to lose? It was just another halftime show where they got a member of the audience to try to score some sort of impossible goal. Anyone who's ever attended a sporting event is familiar with them. Hit a baseball across the diamond through a ring the size of a jellybean and win $65424132143121542!

Both brothers played hockey, and this wasn't the first game Nick had attended. He already knew his name would never be drawn, and couldn't be bothered to even be present in the stadium during the drawing. And because fate is set to prove him wrong, his name is drawn. Apparently no one in the family knew how to use a cell phone, because instead of calling or texting Nick and telling him what happened, their father made an executive decision that Nate can just take the shot instead. No point wasting 75 cents on a text to get Nick to come in when the puck isn't gonna go in anyways. Besides, aren't little conveniences like this the reasons they went through all the extra work to have twins? After the extra pain of giving birth to two babies simultaneously and having to work twice as hard in the past 11 years to raise them, this was one of the opportunities to reap the rewards. If they weren't going to take advantage of these perks of having twins, they might as well just have has an abortion when they found out they had twins.

Nate Smith

Nate moves into position and to make a long story short, he shoots AND HE SCORES! His graceful wrist shot sends the puck 27 meters across the ice and into an opening a mere centimeter wider than the puck. The crowd goes wild and Nate is fifty THOOOUUUUUUUUUUSAND dollars richer!

Problem is, Nate's father found out he won't be receiving his cut after giving his son a hard time about the grades on his report card back at the end of June. So he starts feeling a little guilty about the deception and calls the game organizer the next day to tell them the truth. The insurance company, Odds On, responsible for paying the $50,000 reminds the family that the prize can only be paid in the person who's name was drawn actually takes the shot. Well no shit Sherlock. If anyone was eligible for the prize, why even bother drawing a name?

But in this case Nick and Nate are practically the same. What's really in a name? It's only a few letters someone wrote on a piece of paper. If Nate was Nick and Nick was Nate, what would be the difference? Now the insurance company is "investigating" the matter and trying to reach a verdict on whether to pay. We're all familiar with insurance companies and what happens when they "investigate". Nate's not getting his fifty thousand bucks, you and I both know that. So the next time you want to be honest about something, think about what you could be losing.

UPDATE: Odds On completed their little investigation. As expected, they didn't pay the brothers, but they did donate $20,000 to a charity on their behalf so they're not completely refusing to acknowledge the shot.