HERE'S TODAY'S RELATIONSHIP QUESTION :

This man wins new cars hands down : Professional ‘hand-a-thoner’ prospers as last man standing (Anna Wilde Mathews, 7/30/02, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)

More than 134 hours into a popular local endurance contest, two hollow-eyed men at a Volkswagen dealership here still had their hands plastered to a pale-green Beetle. Whoever lasted the longest would win the $20,000 car.

THE TWO HAD outlasted 41 other hopefuls who began the competition six days earlier. Then, the morning DJ from Toledo’s K100 radio station delivered a 5:30 a.m. update on the last men standing: “This will be the first time since the first Hands-On Marathon that a rookie will win the car!”

But “Brian Root of Perrysburg,” as the announcer introduced one of the two remaining men, is no rookie. Mr. Root, who is actually from Mobile, Ala., is a professional hand-a-thoner. He travels around the country entering competitions.

By his own count, the tall 44-year-old has won or tied for first in 16 hands-on contests, collecting about $160,000. He doesn’t do much else. He lives with his mother and hasn’t held a long-term job since the mid-1980s, soon after he discovered that in one 97-hour span, he could win a truck worth half his annual pay as a produce manager in a health-food store.

When the wife sends you this story is she trying to tell you she thinks you're underemployed? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 31, 2002 11:40 AM