My Lucky Day

                               By Jeff Baker

            Usually, my luck is pretty good.

            I was flat broke one time, okay nearly broke, and I wandered into one of those little corner grocery shops and bought a lottery ticket with my last couple of bucks. The ticket didn’t pan out but I got to talking to the guy behind the counter and he told me the guy who worked the night shift had just quit and would I like the job? Another time I was running for a taxi in the rain, slipped and fell and got drenched by a passing bus (which I also didn’t catch) and had to walk home. When I got to my apartment and turned on the TV, I heard that a bus had skidded in the rain and squashed a cab down the street from where I lived. The driver was just banged-up, but any passenger would have been flattened; passenger, yeah me! My rich fiancée dumped me in college, I later found out that she was seeing several other guys on the side and she was wallowing in debt from her supposedly rich father. Stuff like that. Luck.

            Which brings me to Friday the thirteenth and the jar of pickles.

            I was entertaining that evening, so I set the table that afternoon. As I have a classy apartment I decided to go whole hog and serve hors-duffers; you know, the fancy stuff. I had a jar of pickles but opening it was the problem. There were days when I seriously thought that if I had a lot of money I would forego banks and have it sealed in a pickle jar. I tried twisting it, tapping it and pouring first hot then cold water on the lid. I was bouncing around the apartment, trying to twist the lid off when it slipped out of my hand, bounced off the couch and smashed through the window, falling a full four stories to bounce off an awning and crash to the ground between the horse and the carriage it was supposed to be drawing (these are pretty popular these days.) The horse took off and I rushed downstairs to see if anything had been damaged, anything I might be held liable for (I should have stayed in the apartment, but since my broken window was the only one the jar could have come through I felt I had nothing to lose by admitting it was my mess.)

            I found out a couple of hours later that the carriage ride had been paid for by my date’s own new, rich fiancée who was stopping by to punch me in the nose out of jealousy (understandable) but when the smashing pickle jar scared the horse and he ran off, the fiancée made such a screaming mess of himself that when she’d stopped the horse, my erstwhile date dumped the fiancée and called me, saying she’ll take me over money. So we made a date for burgers the next day.

            Not bad for a Friday the Thirteenth, even if I did have to pay to repair the window.

            Like I said, usually my luck is usually pretty good!

                                    —end—