Ratioanl thinkers have argued for many years as to the worst card that could ever be dealt to a human.
Nibbled slowly to death by centipedes?
A long train journey with X Factor judge Daniel Bedingfield?
These would be cruel breaks. But I have consistently found one thing worse, and consistency must always be respected.
Thwarted shopping.
It's the worst thing of all. You find something you like, decide to think about it for a while because thinking before acting is good and sensible, then you go back to the shop the next day, and it's gone.
The sense of entitlement you feel having found this thing before anyone else cannot possibly abide a less entitled shopper whisking it away. I have been so devastated I have even asked the person in charge where it has gone, in the vain hope it is out the back.
They tell you it sold, and it takes every atom of willpower not to vault over the counter and rip their lungs out with your bare hands.
There are tortuous variants on this syndrome. I struck one two weeks ago, at the hospice shop. I was searching for something exotic and mentioned my quest to fellow hunter and gatherer, Cr Teresa Stevenson. She smiled thinly and led me to a set of bowls in a box under a chair.
I did not need a set of lawn bowls, but I thought I would think about them for a day. By nightfall I coveted them more than anything I have ever coveted before. $20!
The next day I raced in to purchase, only to find the four balls were now three. Why would anyone buy just one? It couldn't have been shoplifted. Nobody would shoplift a lawn bowl - you stuff one of them up yer thumper and it's obvious what's there. Plus it will fall out and break all your toes.
Crestfallen and saying swear words under my breath, I sought solace in Hayward's Auction House, which suddenly appeared before me like a mirage in the desert.
And there, cooloo coolay, I found not one but TWO sets of bowls. I put a $10 reserve on both, in the belief eight bowls for $20 was better than four. Or three.
And yes, I got both sets.
I doubt if I will ever roll these bowls across a finely-cut green, or even down an indoor mat.
I may place them at our front door to ward off evil spirits, circular Lares and Penates, entirely fitting for a house next door to one with wallpaper all over its front.
But I do have bowls in my DNA, so who knows?
My uncle Les was a fine lawn bowler, one of the best in town 60 years ago. I also remember him coming to our house and giving zither recitals, his bald head gleaming with perspiration as he played.
At 91 he featured in the pages of this newspaper showing off his latest vintage English car.
How do you stay so fit and healthy, asked the ODT reporter. I have stayed away from wild women, said Uncle Les.
My other bowls memory comes from the age of 10, when the national championships were being held in Dunedin. My friend and I went round to the Roslyn club and inexplicably spent the week collecting empty cigarette packets.
Bowlers smoked like trains back then, the better ones often with a cigarette in each hand, delivering the bowl off their tongue.
I have no idea why we collected empty cigarette packets. But I do know when the bowlers saw them and asked to buy some, thinking the packets were full, we would giggle behind cupped hands at their stupidity.
Old people are as mad as paint tins, we would say.
Yes, we would say, let's hope we never get old and daft like them.
So now I am old and daft like them and I have eight bowls.
''Is it your intention to fill our house so full of junk it will burst?'' asks my wife. Mmmmmm ... alas ... probably it is.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
