Do you feel lucky punk?

Well do ya? Me?...Well let's see. I always get stuck at red lights. Where I used to live in Newcastle I would have to go through 22 sets of traffic lights to get to work. I went through a period of counting how many red lights I got each morning. 16 out of the 22 were red on average. And this was peak hour on the main strip most of the way.

But on the other hand I never have trouble finding a car park. Even in Sydney on a Saturday night I could still get a park outside whatever pub I was going to. Now...no matter how many traffic lights you get caught at they will always eventually turn green. But potentially you could drive around forever and never find a decent car park. To me that’s pretty lucky.

My 50/50 luck is up the shit. I never win the toss of a coin. If I come to a T-intersection and I am required to guess the right direction I will always go the wrong way first. It’s actually quite funny. If my instinct tells me to turn right then you can guarantee that I should have turned left. If the next time my instinct tells me to turn right, I may choose to ignore it and turn left. In that situation it would appear I should have followed my instincts.

But if I really, really need something, I will get it. For example, the job I had before my current one. I hated it. I have never been more miserable in my whole life than when I was in that job. But I had just moved up here and we were paying our mortgage back home in Newcastle while we waited for the house to sell, and we were paying my rent up here at the same time. My wife was with a young child and was in no position to work. I had no choice but to soldier on. The problem was I was really bad at my job. It’s the only job I have ever gone close to losing due to incompetence which is part of the reason I hated it so much. It was a sales job. I hate, hate, hate sales jobs. I only took the job because it was the only place that would hire me on a telephone interview alone. Anyways I applied for the job I’m in now and basically I was looking at getting fired any day. I was one of 300 applicants. And…well…as you have already worked out. I got it. Because I really, really needed it.

My wife had a failed pregnancy before meeting me. She was told that she would most likely not be able to have children. I had no idea what my little swimmer boys were like. All I knew is I had never gotten a girl pregnant before and I smoked a hell of a lot of drugs, so even if there were some swimmers down there chances are they were not overly motivated to do the trek. Although we were not really planning to fall pregnant we were certainly not real careful about avoiding it and against all odds we fell pregnant and had the most beautiful child anyone could ever hope for (well my wife did really but I had some ‘input’ into the deal).

These are just a few examples of how my luck runs. On the surface the odds may seem to be against me. But when the chips are down (not in the literal sense cos my gambling luck is totally shocking) I generally come up with the goods.

So if you ask me am I lucky, my answer is “I have terrible luck…but I am one of the luckiest people in the world”.