Feeling Lucky

Tweet

Back when I was going to college a woman said to me, “You’re the only person I know who can fall into a bucket of sh_t and come out smelling like a rose.” What she meant was, “You’re a lucky guy.” At the time I faced a financial situation and I didn’t know what I was going to do. Then an unexpected check show up in my mailbox. It was just enough to take care of my financial problem. I have never really felt all that lucky. I tried for maybe fifteen years in my younger days to win the Reader’s Digest and Publishers Clearing House contests. I got zilch. Not even their lowest prizes, which, at the time, was either a magazine subscription or twenty-five measly pennies. Even the time my neighbor bought me a lottery ticket all I won was three dollars. Then I turn that in for more ticket and won a grand total of nothing. How lucky can I be? Sitting here thinking I realize just because I didn’t win the Reader’s Digest or the Publishers Clearing House contests, or even very much from lottery tickets, that doesn’t mean I’m not lucky at all. Thinking back over my life I realize I lived through two bad recessions. I had jobs through both recessions. The last recession hit in 2008. I had just landed a job in 2007. I ended up working, in many cases, overtime, through the recession. In many cases the only time I knew people were struggling was by what I heard on the news. I wasn’t becoming rich, but I wasn’t struggling either. Back in the 1980s I moved back to Spokane after living in Oregon with brother for about a year. I went back to the apartment where I lived before moving to Oregon. The same manager was there. I told him I had just enough to pay for one month’s rent. The manager told me to hang on to my money until I got a job. Getting a job didn’t happen as quickly as I would have like and my money ran out. When my food was nearly gone I applied for food stamps. In those days they mailed them to you. I was told I would get them in two to three days. By the third day I ate my food was gone. I had been living on one slice of bread a day for a few days. On third day the mailman arrived and I found the food stamps had showed up. I went to the local grocery store and bought a bunch of groceries. At home I cooked a good meal. Just after I had eaten there was a knock on my door. I opened it and found the owner of a gas station where I had applied for a job. Was I still interested in working for him? Yes. Come to think about it, I have never really been out of work for very long. I have never been homeless although I have come close to it. But something always happened that got me back on my feet. For a few of years I even was able to housesit for some well-to-do people while they went to a warmer climate during the winter or on a vacation. I housesit for three couples. One couple went south for the winter. When they returned there was a couple who went to Alaska for the summer who I housesit for. Then in the fall there was a couple who took about a month’s vacation. After they returned I when back to my winter housesitting job. So for a few years I didn’t have to pay rent or utilities. My housing was free. The photo was taken out of my living room window. I would hike out there to the end of the rainbow but I know two things. One, I would never actually find the end because it would keep moving and two, there would be no pot of gold there if I ever did find the end. Photo © 2017 by Richard L. Meister Jr.