Lucky

Luck. The dictionary people say it is good fortune; advantage or success, considered as the result of chance. Every coach I have ever been guided by has said luck is simply when hard work and preperation meets opportunity. Seth D. always used to say that luck beat skill every time. Although this was usually in response to some newb getting the better at him at Halo or someone hitting his fastball.

When I was around eight years old or so I saw an episode of Duck Tales featuring Donald Duck's extremely lucky cousin Gladstone Gander. Gladstone was so lucky it defied all odds. He never worked for anything as his eternal good fortune provided him with any and everything he ever needed or wanted. He deplored work so much that he only did it once; after that he decided to leave everything to chance and to take advantage of opportunities as they came his way. Of course Gander's lack of ambition and his seemingly inability to create any long-term plans or goals was totally lost on me as a child, and I decided that my heart's desire, more than anything else, was to be the luckiest person on the planet. Every year when I would blow out my birthday candles, I would wish to be lucky. Every night when I looked up at the first star to show itself in the Heavens, I would wish to be lucky. Any shootings stars or wishing well coins, had me wishing to be lucky. Every selfish silent prayer, I have said to God has been for, you guessed it, luck.

And for the most part I have led an extremely fortunate life; I had a nice family, always had enough to eat, always had a roof over my head, and more importantly I've always had someone to pull me out of the fire when I was in trouble. And though I've encountered a few crappy situations in my life (*cough, cough* the angry lesbian incident, the disappearing bank account *cough*) I have encountered no real tragedies in my life. In fact all those crappy parts led me to where I am today, which really ain't so bad. Beautiful wife, decent job, loving family, et al. And then there is the matter of my luck. I won a door prize and a 50/50 raffle (Mollie and I gave part of the winnings to the Haiti relief effort) at the company holiday party. But come to think of it that probably had more to do with math as the odds of winning were pretty good because there were not a lot of people there. On the other hand maybe I truly have been blessed with good luck. Maybe everything will always work out for the best for me. Meh, I think now that I'm an adult it would be more prudent to actually plan for the future and be responsible and stuff... but where is the fun in that?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I wanted to mention something that kind of fit in but not really. It is sort of a weird cosmic coincidence (ha! no such thing!) but for Christmas my team at work did a Santa's workshop theme and one of the things they did was to punch all of our names into a random "elf name generator." My elf name: Lucky Candylips.