July 19, 2010: “Luck” is Just A Four Letter Word July 19, 2010

And my oh my how many OTHER four letter words have spewed out of my mouth when it comes to luck.

The million dollar question is, “Are some people BORN lucky?”  I am a firm believer that they are.  I am also a firm believer that I am NOT one of them.  Everytime my friend Susan goes to Lemoore Casino, she wins hundreds to thousands of dollars on the same keno machine.  My friend Jim gets good cards at poker.  I walk by the slots in Vegas hotels and hear nothing but bells and whistles and cheers from the other patrons.  But me?  I am always stuck in the mud when it comes to Lady Luck.  The bitch never smiles on me when it comes to games of chance.

Now let’s get the disclaimer out of the way.  Yeah yeah, some people are born with bad genes and I have been lucky enough to only have to endure 3 wisdom teeth extracted, a broken finger and two stitches in my skull from a rock fight.  But that’s not really luck.  That’s genetics and some people have quality ones and some others don’t.  It is an interesting fact that my mother’s maiden name was “Eugenides” which translates from Greek into English as “good genes”.  So I do have that going for me.  But again, that’s not really luck per se.  I am talking about games of chance.

It’s always been like this.  You know those seven tiles you get to pick at the start of Scrabble?  K, X, P, B, S, S, and Blank.  Backgammon?  1-2, 5-1 and 6-3 are my opening rolls du jour.  Scratch off lottery tickets?  All I get are the silver filings on my clothes for the next 6 hours.  Raffles?  Hardly.  Chinese auctions? Forget it.  Coin flips?  Always the other side.  Rock, Paper Scissors?  I’m internally bleeding within minutes.  Slot machines? Spaces across the board.  Roulette? The ball hops off the wheel.  Craps?  The dice roll off the table.  Carnie games?  Fat chance.  The list goes ever on.

I do remember one carnie I went to as a kid, I think it was the St. Phillips Bazaar and I swore I would FORCE myself to have luck.  I invested something like $23 into one of those fixed carnie games and FINALLY got my $2 glass mirror with The Who etched into it that I had been trying so desperately for.  Now, for starters, why I even WANTED The Who is beyond me as I had no clue who they even were.  But a win is a win and I walked away high as a kite.  But as luck would have it, I tripped and it smashed a mere 12 minutes later assuring me of another 7 years of downright hellaciously bad luck.

There was one time in which I blew my proverbial luckload .  I actually once won a 15 inch black and white TV.  You can see how long ago it was because they were actually MAKING black and white TVs.  I mean, think about that one.  There will be a day sometime soon when kids will be like, “They consciously CHOSE to make a TV in black and white when there was color available?”  But the win was a win nonetheless and I remember going absolutely jizz crazy thinking I had just won a million dollar lottery.  I was whooping and hallowing and making a general fool of myself, but hey, I was only 11, so that gave me the green light to go batshit.

And there was one time that I actually DID break the cosmic toilet flush of luck by being at a poker table where two other people won a jackpot in which the entire table shared some of the prize.  Pull?  $1200.

But barring those two fleeting moments, luck has always been something this side of a unicorn and leprechaun; myths that you hear other people have witnessed like sightings of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster or UFOs.  Luck just does not reside anywhere close to Paul Peter Argyropoulos.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t keep trying.  I do continue to play the lottery hoping against hope that I have been building up my lifetime of lucklessness for a HUGE orgasm of a win.  But yesterday, I threw my hat into a very big contest.  Apparently, this swank museum in Chicago is awarding someone 10K and a stay in their museum for 30 days.  I guess that is not a contest of sorts as it seems more like employment.  But I made my video, filled out my application, took my photo and am throwing my chances against the wall that I will get picked for the challenge.  Frankly, I think it’d be a great opportunity.  The 10K is just icing on the cake, but it is a kind of contest that I really wanted to roll the dice with.  So with that said, I ask you to all do me a favor….

…wish me luck!