Well, it’s the month of March, and there’s a lot of luck
going around.
March
madness, leprechauns, my son’s birthday… it’s all about luck.
Which, logically,
I shouldn’t believe in.
I come from
a family of scientists, none of whom believe in luck. But for all of that, I’ve
spent a considerable amount of time breaking down my heritage and deciding
which nationalities are lucky and which ones are unlucky.
For
instance, I’ve decided the Dutch are, generally, lucky. Score one for me! At
the other end of the spectrum, the Irish are either tremendously lucky or
horribly unlucky. There is no in-between with the Irish. And the English?
They’re the “meh” in the luck sandwich. Sometimes, they’re lucky, sometimes
they’re not.
My brother
has Dutch luck. I’ve never met anyone who is as lucky as he is. It’s like he
has a guardian angel looking after him, a leprechaun in his back pocket, and
Ganesh is sitting on his shoulder. My brother can wake up in a foreign country
with no pants, no shoes, and not a cent to his name, and leave with a new set
of clothes, a bus ticket home, two new friends, and $500 in his pocket.
Sure, that
sounds absurd, but it actually happened. (Don’t ask about the no pants part.
It’s a long story.)
This is the
same brother who will tell you he doesn’t believe in luck. In his opinion, we
make our own fate, and we make our own luck. He believes that luck is about
positioning oneself in such a way that when the opportunity strikes, one is in
the position to take advantage of it.
Hmph. The
lucky always say that.
As for me,
I have Irish luck. It’s either really good or really bad. For instance, if I’m
at a college or professional sporting event, and there’s even the remotest
possibility that the ball could hit
me in the face, I’m pretty much guaranteed that it will. I remember once, I was
at a basketball game, and I was seated in the 15th row from the
floor. Great seats. I looked over at my mother and said,
“Ma, we
have to move. The ball is going to hit me in the face.”
She told me
to stop being melodramatic. Or, rather, that’s what she was in the process of
saying when…the ball bounced over all the
people standing in front of me and hit me in the face. On TV, too. It was
super awesome, because what senior in high school doesn’t want to be hit in the
face by a basketball on national TV, while sitting next to her mother? It was
more spectacular because I knew I’d be starting college there the following
Fall.
This has
happened often enough that I’ve learned that nosebleed seats aren’t so bad.
Yes, that means it has happened more than once. More than once on national TV,
too. Pretty much, if someone says to me, “Oh, I saw you on TV,” it because I
was hit in the face with something. (Once it was another woman’s boobs when she
drunkenly and “accidentally” fell into my husband’s lap. That particular escapade aired on Pay Per
View. Apparently, I did not look happy. Since I’m not so good at hiding my
disdain, and I know I possess an awesome stink eye, I’m sure “not happy” was a
bit of an understatement.)
What are
the chances of that? My oh-so-lucky brother may not believe in the Fortune
smiling down upon him, but I certainly do. Because those of us who suffer under
the yoke of unluckiness from time to time recognize Fortune’s smile, even when
it’s not bestowed upon us.
But my luck
has also been really, really good. It’s come through for me when I’ve needed
it. And trust me, it was luck, chance, fortune… whatever name you decide to
give it, it was all about luck. Not skill, not some innate ability, not positioning
myself so that I could recognize and seize opportunity when it struck. No, it
was dumb luck, plain and simple.
A few years
ago (okay, more than a few), when my husband and I were flat broke, he took me
out to dinner to celebrate my graduation. I knew we didn’t have a whole lot of
money, since we’d been eating ramen for the last month, but I didn’t know we
were flat broke—I’d been ensconced in my study, writing my thesis, for the last
six months, all while working two jobs and going to school. I hadn’t slept more
than four hours a night in those six months, and I was exhausted. But I’d
finished the darn thing, and I had a job lined up that I would start two days
later. Husband wanted me to reward me for all my hard work, so he took me out
to a dinner we couldn’t afford (at a coffee shop in a casino), and while we
were there, he told me he wasn’t even sure we had enough money to afford a meal
and drinks, so he warned me to “eat cheap.”
And so I did.
At the end
of a terrible meal, we had a single dollar left over.
Outside of
the coffee shop was a slot machine. One of the high paying ones. Out here, it’s
known as MegaBucks. The payouts are over a million dollars, if you’re lucky and
have bet the maximum you’re allowed, which is three dollars.
I had a
buck, and, on a lark (and knowing the odds—I’d been doing stats for six months,
after all), I went ahead and put that single dollar into the MegaBucks machine.
I turned to talk to husband, so I never saw the eagles line up.
I heard an
alarm, though, and, for a moment, I was convinced the place was on fire. That
is until I glanced at husband’s face and saw he’d gone pale.
No, I
hadn’t hit MegaBucks. I hit the MegaMini, the one just below the massive win.
If I’d played three dollars, I would have won something like $150,000. As it
stood, I won $7,000.
For two
kids who had resorted to eating ramen noodles for weeks on end, that $7000 was
more money than we’d see in months.
What was
that but Fortune, smiling on us, when we really needed it? I haven’t won
anything since (I suppose you have to play more often than I do in order to
win, though), and I don’t expect to. After all, Fortune, like lightning, rarely
strikes twice. Well, more to the point, she rarely strikes me twice.
So while I
think we have the ability to shape our own destinies, I believe in luck. I keep
thinking I can pull another one out, and I’ll win the lottery or something
(again, there is that whole playing
the lottery in order to win it thing, but those are just details, right?). But
the way karma works with me, I’m actually more likely to be struck by lightning
a few times.
And, from
what I’ve been told, it’s not worth it. I heard this from a friend who’s been
struck not one, not twice, but three times.
Talk about unlucky. And he doesn’t even have a winning lottery ticket to show
for it.
When
Kenneth Mackay, long-banished rogue and thief, returns to the Mackay holding at
the request of his brother, he has no idea what he might find. He certainly
doesn’t expect to be confronted with his twin’s imminent death, or with the
plan his brother has concocted.
Ten
years before, Malcolm made a tragic mistake, and, to preserve the family
name—and his own skin—he allowed Kenneth to take the fall. Now that he is dying
without an heir, Malcolm plans to atone for his mistake: by giving Kenneth his
life back. All Kenneth has to do is assume his brother’s identity. But
complicating matters is the unexpected return of Lady Isobel Mackay, the
daughter of an English marquess... and the wife Malcolm didn’t want.
Isobel
barely knows the husband who abandoned her even before their marriage, and
she'd long since given up on having a real marriage with him. Yet when she
returns to the Mackay holding far earlier than expected, she finds her husband
a changed man. Despite the hurt between them, Isobel's heart responds to this
man who cares for his entire clan as if they were family. Who, for the first
time since their marriage, cares for her as if she is, too.
Falling in
love with her husband had never been part of Isobel’s plan. But when their
future is suddenly in peril, Isobel must find a way to save him—from himself
and from the deception threatening to tear them apart.
