Veggie Crisps

I always feel poorly for people with really bad luck. This is primarily because I don’t think they deserve it. Luck is a term that we use to dismiss the odds of chance. As I see it, bad luck is simply thrust upon people, who haven’t done anything to warrant it.

Someone, for instance, with some dice in their hand, should roll more sevens than any other number. This is what statistics say. Statistics are hard and unbending. “Bobby will roll more sevens than any other combination.” Statistics cannot then understand how Bobby could roll forty seven times and never see a seven. This is not Bobby’s fault. This is just bad luck.

Bad luck is an affliction I have not often suffered from. That isn't to say, I’ve never had bad things happen. I have. Mostly these things are because of poor choices that I have made. My father once told me,"the majority of all accidents in life are caused by people doing stupid things."

At the time I didn’t want to hear the truth in these words. I was recovering from rolling down a rather steep hill and scraping myself up rather badly. Earlier in the day I had ignored my uncles guidance and had decided instead to follow the family pet across a dirt ledge. Amos had no trouble with the path he had blazed. He made it to the other side in record time. I on the other hand got myself wrapped up in someones fishing line and rolled down to the base of the hill. This was right by my rather stunned uncle and sister. This wasn’t bad luck. This was a stupid decision. Luck is quite different. There are two basic types of luck, good luck and bad luck.

Good luck is getting a second chance on a college paper because the day you forgot to bring it, is the same day that the professor called in sick. Good luck is being short on change and finding a quarter on the floor. This sort of thing happens to me all the time. Something for nothing. I didn’t earn it, or work for it, it just happened. As I figure it, for every person like me there has to be someone who gets stuck with an extra portion of bad luck. I mean luck cannot all be good. There must be some bad to compensate.

Bad luck is scrounging up one dollar in change and heading the the vending machine. Getting all the money in, even though you had to put the nickel through five times. Selecting the wholesome bag of veggie crisps located at the coordinates of A4 and then seeing the metal spiral unwind your snack but never seeing it fall. This is because your bag of veggie crisp have wedged themselves between the glass and ring. You shake the machine, pound on it’s front and malign it’s linage. After a while there is nothing left to do but buy another bag and hope to get them both down. You of course, have no more change, so you leave. All the while wondering how a package of veggie crisps can stay in such a precarious perch for so long.

I then walk up the same vending machine a little later to purchase a soda. It falls out, like always, and when I reach inside to grab it out, I’m greeted by an unexpected bonus! Veggie Crisps.

"Wow. What a stroke of good luck!"