On August 19, my husband sent me an email with a link that said “Fill this out”. As the dutiful wife I am, I blindly clicked that link and filled out a quick form, submitting my precious contact information for a lottery – a chance to win 2 tickets to Hamilton in LA on August 20.

Yeah, right. Nobody wins those. They’re just collecting email addresses. In fact, I refused to provide an “optional” phone number. Scam. (I said not a word of this to my husband).

First of all, it was easy. So easy that when I LOST that lottery on August 20, I had no problem signing up again for the following Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday shows. I mean, with such little effort, what did I have to lose?

Plus, since the 4th of July, when our children (and honestly I) first heard the soundtrack from Hamilton and I purchased it in the car on the way home, we’ve listened to many of the songs, over and over. Our friends’ kids LOVED IT, dancing around the pool party singing all the words. It was the first time I realized that when Lin Manual Miranda hosted Saturday Night Live and rapped his intro that THAT rap was actually a real song adapted from his Hamilton show.

I loved that monologue.

But back to Hamilton. As I received my 4th “Sorry, you’re a loser” email notification on Wednesday, August 23 from the “Lucky Seat” Lottery, I got another notification… A calendar invitation from my husband with the word “Ham” in it for an 8 pm show on Thursday, August 24.

At first, I thought he was just trying to add to his luck with CONFIDENCE, but then, I had already gotten my rejection email so surely he had, too. I replied immediately with “YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!” Nope.

While I’m aware that through random acts of goodness throughout his life, Bart Johnson has built up quite a bit of karma, NOBODY wins those things! He’d only filled out 5 short forms (and he buys real lottery tickets regularly and we haven’t won THAT yet…)

Excited and shocked, I went straight to the Pantages Theater website to see what those tickets would actually cost. The cheapest ticket for that date and show was $507 – but the only other tickets ranged from $750-850 a ticket. THIS IS THE LA SHOW, folks, not on Broadway!

After a brief moment where I thought, hmm, if we SOLD these tickets we could buy 4 trips to Harry Potter World, a flight for four to various places, 3 very nice vacation weekends in Palm Springs, and so on… I got incredibly excited that our daughter, who knows the lyrics to Schuyler Sisters by heart – including which parts are sung by Angelica, Eliza and Peggy (I’m Eliza, FYI) – was going to get to see Hamilton. What 6-year-old gets to do THAT?!

(NOTE: In fact, FEW 6-year-olds SHOULD do that, says The Internet. Bart got home from the show and said “There was a whore in the show!” HA! For the record, I knew that.)

(SECOND NOTE: You can’t actually “sell” those tickets easily. You win the day before the show, have a few hours to choose to buy them for $10 each, and have to show up at 5 pm day of the show to pick them up with your ID.)

But I digress, again. Near the end of dinner on the day of the show, we asked Zoe if she’d like to SEE the actual show about Hamilton. Her eyes (and rest of her face) lit up, and her head nodded vigorously. I had already laid out her favorite “fancy” dress and shoes – even a headband – so we tossed our dirty urchin in a quick shower, dressed her up (including lip gloss and a tiny bit of sparkly eyeshadow) and she headed off with Daddy to see Hamilton.

She was a little bit excited (as evidenced by the photo above).

According to Bart, during the first several songs she would lean over and tell her next door “neighbors” (who were a young couple that also won their tickets) some key facts about the show, which of course she had never seen.

In case you weren’t aware (I wasn’t), the show itself is 2 hours and 45 minutes, and we’ve NEVER made it through the entire soundtrack, so somewhere after the 2-hour mark, she started nodding off (it was an 8 pm show on a school night…) Bart kept asking if she wanted to go, to which she’d say NO! then start falling asleep minutes later.

And so that’s how my daughter got to see Hamilton in the right orchestra section, row PP (not a bad seat at all!) for $50 ($10/ticket + a $30 t-shirt), and my husband became the “Best Dad Ever.” Again.