"Do you ever play the lotto down in Manhattan?" Dad asks as we drive to the train station. It is a hot night in the suburbs which means it’s going to be an event hotter night in the city.
I never buy the lotto.
"You should really do it one day. Just a lucky number, birthday, anniversary..."
I suppose I should do it, one day. One day when I think that luck is on my side. One day just to pass the time. But I’ve always thought that you have to really believe in something in order to reap the benefits of it. Once you stop believing in the tooth fairy you stop getting a dollar under your pillow. If you don’t believe in true love you never seem to quite find it, and if you don’t believe in luck you’ll never strike it big.
"Just try it sometime. You never can tell."
People down on their luck are always believing in it more than they deep-down-know they should. Against all odds they put all their chips out on the table because they believe in that last almost tangible sliver of a chance that might turn their luck around. But luck is just what is caught up in the spinning axis of the universe that you can’t reach out and take control of. Luck is (unlike the lotto ticket) out of your hands. Numbers are just numbers. Birthday are just birthdays. Anniversaries are just anniversaries - and they mean something to you but they don’t mean anything to the automated machine that selects them at random.
We can’t control much, (tomorrow, you just don’t know), so we scratch those little boxes on those little pink tickets thinking we’re taking control of our lives. What would we do with all that money? What would we do first? We dream. We hope. We deep-down-know better.
Keep your luck to yourself, I say, your numbers, your birthdays, your anniversaries, and go about your daily chores in life - the hard living and working and loving (where teeth aren’t worth a thing) and pretend to yourself that every day is like your own personal lotto ticket. It may change how you think about luck. Just try it sometime. You never can tell.
1 comment:
People should read this.
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