Write a story that uses the phrase “a shot in the dark” in the first sentence.

This happens to be a true story:

My granddaughter was 10 and already using electronics so it was “a shot in the dark” to keep giving her books as gifts.
I expected them, from this point on, to be tossed on a shelf and forgotten.
But I gave her one book that was a tale about a kid just her age. It was a true story about an African boy titled, A Long Walk to Water. I’d seen it on a secondhand book site and purchased it for her at Christmas just from me.
The kids (even my daycare ones) were used to me gifting them books. When they were little, they got excited. But as time and electronics took over, the books were received like “gag gifts”. Sometimes, with ‘eye rolls’.
Upon receiving it, Evelyn thought the book sounded good, but her eyes were in a “what’s next” holding pattern, so I wasn’t counting on anything.
About a month later, Evelyn shocked me with an announcement that she was enjoying the book I had given her! For about a week, she shared updates on how the story was getting interesting. Even recently at 13, she referred to having enjoyed that book’s format of two parallel tales coming together. She remembers being ‘captured’ by the tale.

Was that the moment? Was that the book that turned her into a “reader”? I’ll never know for sure. Her parents also kept her well-stocked with books.

She still catches her school bus from my house daily. Lately, we spend that half hour, telling each other where our current books are going.
Hey, taking a shot, isn’t always going to produce results BUT not taking them, never will.