Being Unlucky Enough to be Lucky.
Posted: Monday, March 10, 2008
by Mike Fak
http://mikefak.com
It's been a crazy winter in the Midwest. We had thunderstorms and heavy snows, cold days, warm days and days where the wind would knock the Statue of Liberty over.
Throughout it all I kept hearing that although it was a terrible winter, we were lucky it wasn't worse than it was. How it has come to be that we all consider ourselves unluckily lucky is a mystery to me.
Wouldn't these people actually be lucky if they didn't have any nasty sewerage floating their storage boxes into each other? One man who actually lost a finished rec room with a huge plasma television set told me how lucky he was to have insurance. Boy I sure wish I was as lucky as he is.
When I and my neighbors were busy shoveling our vehicles out of drifts of snow in early January, many cheerfully said we have been lucky for many years not to get too many of these snowfalls. Wouldn't we actually have been luckier if we could say that as we swept just a dusting off our stairs? The third time in a month this debacle happened I didn't hear many "lucky" conversations going on while snow piled up around the town. That is except for that one weird neighbor who always is smiling. He still felt we were lucky since we don't have terrible winters like this every year. Hey buddy, Tibet doesn't have winters like this every year.
On the coldest day of the winter, my furnace decided to take a day off and the radiator pipes froze. When the thaw came quickly two days later, one of them burst and I had a real problem with water cascading into the basement again. The plumber who was kind enough to drop everything and come over right away told me how lucky I was only one of the dozens of pipes broke. "Thank God I'm lucky I replied".
People feeling they are unluckily lucky doesn't just happen in Central Illinois. Last night I watched cars and trucks slipping off the highways in the Northern part of the state on the news. A weatherman came on to tell us how lucky they all were that the major brunt of the storm actually missed their area. Tell the guy in the ditch how lucky he is buddy and find out how lucky you are to only end up with one black eye.
To prove the point of the happy weather reporter, the national news showed the huge snowstorm that did give its full brunt to Ohio. There the entire state was being buried in over a foot of snow with high winds making it impossible for motorists to do anything but abandon their vehicles. The scene in downtown Cleveland showed end loaders scooping tons of snow into trucks to try and get the streets passable. Incredibly Clevelanders we told they were lucky since the major storm happened on a Saturday instead of a workday. The reporter decided it wasn't ill fortune that right behind him another motorist was abandoning her vehicle to "luckily" walk away into the night without being hurt. I'm not certain she considered herself lucky that she was able to abandon her car on a Saturday night and not Monday afternoon but maybe that's how she felt. Maybe she's related to the guy who had a giant screen television floating in three feet of waste water who was counting his blessings for being so lucky.
You know the more I think about it, maybe it would be better if we were all just a little less lucky. All this good luck is killing us.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)As luck would have it, my ex husband is in the heating and air game and we've had didly for cold weather here in Virginia. Business is slow and so is the child support payment in arriving, but I'm lucky I suppose that we decided to stop having children when we did and I only have to look into the hungry eyes of the ones I currently have! Funny piece, glad I found you as we share a similar type of humor, only you give a much better voice to yours than I'm able to to mine. Can't wait to see what you have for us next. lolThanks Myla. It looks like you are indeed one of the lucky ones. I also look forward to my next piece as, like always I have no idea what it will be. I guess I'm lucky that something lousy always happens to me before I need to write my next column. Thanks for finding me. I am without a doubt a lost soul. Mike
hi mike, very nice piece, good humor, of course. i enjoyed reading it, and found myself nodding my head up and down a lot. i'm lucky we were home when the fire started in the furnace! thanks for sharing, best regards, sueI'm glad you are lucky Sue. Imagine how unlucky it would be for all of us to be unlucky. Thanks Mike
Mike, We had a so so winter in North Dakota. The months of November and Decemeber were OK but January and February sucked! In Februsray it got down to 30 below windchill a couple of times and we've had some snow piling up! I just turned 50 and I think I'm getting to be more of a sissy when it comes to weather! I don't know, that might have something to do with me riding my scooter all winter long but March has been good so far. I enjoy your articles! JonThanks for stopping by Jon. My son at college uses a scooter and it was a little tough in January for him. He has CP. I enjoy the open honesty in your articles. Searchwarp is my counterfoil for all the serious writing I do or have to help others with so I hope they bring a chuckle or head nod from time to time. Thanks again. Mike
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