Luck

Do you believe in luck? I'm not sure if I do. Sparky does. He is superstitious like a baseball player. He says that The Misers have none. But very good things have happened to us in the past, for instance our darling daughter Bee. We feel very lucky and fortunate to have adopted her; she is the child that we were meant to have and to raise. But bad things have happen to us as well, such as being terminally employment challenged. Sleeford would say that there is no such thing as good or bad luck, that things just randomly occur in the universe and it's our big human egos that think things happen to us for a reason.

My grandmother was very superstitious, but in a much different way than Sparky. Hers was steeped in religiosity; she made the sign of the cross if anything out of the ordinary happened, like a painting falling off the wall. She claimed such things to be the work of the Devil. And she would have everyone else in the room make the sign of the cross, too. I remember being scared to death of this Devil when I was little, you never knew what He would do next.

Grandma also believed in The Evil Eye, that someone could put a curse on you just by intently staring/glaring at you, which was also scary as hell. And she thought that you could predict the sex of an unborn baby by tying a ring on a string and suspending it above the mother-to-be's stomach. If the ring swings back and forth, you're having a boy. If it is more of a circular motion, then it's a girl. And of course she believed in ghosts, but I kinda agree with her on that one. If you lived in her house, I'm sure you would believe in ghosts too. You see, there was a double murder/suicide in that house!

The people who lived there prior to my grandparents were having extreme marital difficulties. The wife was having an affair and the husband suspected as much. One day he came home early and caught his wife in the act with the other man. He shot them both dead, and then turned the gun on himself. Needless to say, it was a bloody mess. Shortly after this horrendous act, my grandparents bought the house. They got a very good deal on it.

They did not tell any of their children about this violent history. Instead, they gave my mother her own bedroom for the first time in her life. The very same bedroom in which this abhorrent crime occurred! But my mother never knew about it, in fact she didn't find out about it until years later, long after she was out of the house.

I loved that house because I loved the people in it, and I spent a lot of time there in my youth, but nonetheless it gave all of us kids the Heebeegeebees. I swear it was haunted. More than one relative has reported seeing ghosts in that house. But I digress.

Are The Misers unlucky? Is there such a thing? Sparky would say an emphatic YES. I admit that some things have happened recently that make me think that he is right, that we have absolutely no luck at all, and lately Cream has been playing in my head: "Born under a bad sign, I've been down since I began to crawl, and if it wasn't for really bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all." Goddamn it, it's an awful thing to think you're unlucky - it feels like you have no control over your life.

Which makes me inclined to agree with Sleeford. Random things happen, bad and good, and sometime you have control over it and sometimes not. But just in case Sparky is right, I'm going to start wearing a good luck talisman. Because maybe sometimes you really do get lucky. Maybe sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. Instead of the wrong place at the wrong time, which has lately been the story of my life. Yes, maybe a lucky amulet would help. After all, we could really use all the help we can get right now.