Lady Luck fails to smile
10th February, 2007
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They've been stood on and sat on but to date I have not managed to drive over them. It's been suggested that to ensure this does not happen I attach them to one of those cords that you drape around your neck. I have made it plain, however, that I would rather buy new spectacles every three months. You might as well buy a second cord and attach it to a sign saying "I've Lost My Mind And Now I Keep Losing My Glasses" and hang that around your neck, too.
I tried to make this point to a friend last week but he kept dissolving into tears and asking for tissues. "Please don't mention glass," he sobbed, reaching for another tissue. Ever eager to revel in somebody else's misfortune, I handed him the entire box and coaxed him into telling his tale of despair. He had begun by making the classic error of placing his glasses on the car roof while juggling keys and bags of groceries. He drove off and covered but a few metres before realising his stupidity. He did a U-turn in time to see a car drive over the glasses, which had fallen off the roof and were lying on the road. Crunch! Picking up the frames, which now resembled a paperclip, he drove home. Fine family man that he is, he decided to lift his spirits by playing cricket with his son. He bowled a perfect ball to the 11-year-old, who drove it for six straight through their home's huge and extremely expensive plate glass window. Smash! My friend slunk back inside, a beaten man, whereupon he was harangued by his wife for having failed to mow the lawn. The mower rattled into life and the first beads of perspiration were just beginning to form on his brow when the mower blades sliced into something solid. He heard a sound like a muffled gunshot, stopped and looked around but could see nothing amiss. He continued mowing and by the time he had finished was in something approaching good spirits. Images of cold beer began to form in his mind as he went to wheel the mower back into the garage. He stopped short of its doorway, however, and found that he lacked the strength to walk inside. He just stood there, mouth slightly agape, staring at the shattered windscreen of his car. Suddenly he understood the significance of the muffled gunshot. A stone flung at high velocity by motor mower blades into laminated glass will do that. The tears flowed freely as he related this to me and when he had finished, I sent him on his way with a fistful of Kleenex. "What an amazing story," I thought, chortling to myself and relishing every detail. "I'm not as terminally accident-prone as some would suggest." I was still smiling as I took the lift down to the basement carpark of our apartment block, popped the car boot and reached inside to extract a cardboard box. There is a story attached to this box and it began 22 years ago when the blender inside it had been bought by my mother. All these years it had provided loyal and faithful service, which only ended a few weeks ago when she allowed the centrepiece of her the lid to fall into the blender. Failing to notice what had happened she pressed "Go" and watched as the blender chewed the plastic fitting into very small pieces. It still worked but you had to place your hand over the top unless you wanted your walls decorated with banana daiquiris. So she bought a new one and presented the old one to me. "Perhaps," I thought as I hauled it out of the boot, "I'll make an industrial quantity of margaritas to celebrate the arrival of our new kitchen toy." So I picked up the box and watched in slack-jawed horror as the glass jug section of the blender fell through the bottom of it and shattered into several million pieces on the concrete floor. She'd had it for 22 years. I'd had it for three hours and I'd destroyed it. I have not yet had the courage to tell her of the spot of bad luck. If I can make sure she doesn't read this entry of my blog, she may never know. |
