lucky

(originally begun as a short story of sorts for Al, yet turns into a letter to little brother.  inspired by true events in my little brother's life)

they say there's this thing called luck.  pots o' gold, end of rainbows, lucky charms cereal, winning the lotto, and the ever-so-ubiquitous Finding A Four Leaf Clover.

some people experience it daily in their lives, as if it's truly some kind of good ol' magical karma coming back to them in spades.  some people have a few lucky moments throughout the course of their lives.

and then there's the flipside....

there are those who face setback after setback, work hard their whole lives but with no real reward, have bad things happen more than a handful of times, are put innocently in harm's way, can't get a break or move forward and seem to lack Luck.

without delving into fragmented philosophies or eastern thought or getting into an argument with Oprah, i am just going to take that thing called LUCK at face value.

because Luck is just Luck.

I grew up as the older sister of one of the luckiest boys I've ever known. Little Ryan O'Patrick Brother Leprechaun.

While running around the green summer grasses at the Indiana homestead, barefoot and carefree, imagination planted its roots firm in the ground.  And when the clover patches worked their ways into our path, that kid had an eagle eye.

In a little 3-year-old Ryan voice: "I think I saw a Four-Leaf-Clover back there."

And a 10 year old big sis said, "Where?" and begins frantically looking everywhere for it as she has spent a good portion of her first decade trying to locate one of her very own.

And I'm sure while Ryan O'Patrick was singing a whimsical song or la-la-la-ing I would follow him and he would walk right up to it (dressed in my pink skirt) and pluck it from the earth with a dramatic 'Ta-Da!!!!" .

AAAAAAGH!  Cursed AGAIN I was.

And he went on to find THREE MORE in his lifetime!

Maybe he had someone watching over him.  Maybe it was that cat who kept climbing into his windowsill.  We thought it was an imaginary cat he was envisioning as tumbling off to dreamland until we saw him with our own eyes.  A little tabby cat just perched on a 2nd-story windowsill staring at Ryan with wonder as he slept....

And maybe that was the dawn of his Lucky Life as he knew it.  Who else would Ann-Margret want greeting her at the stage door? Escorting her to her dressing room during a Chicago theatre run at the early dawning of Ryan O'Patrick's adulthood? 

Former Winnetka-area New Trier high school classmate shouts from the commotion: 'Ann-Margret!  Ann-Margret!  Do you remember me???'

As Ryan O'Patrick leads Ann-Margret into the back halls as she blows kisses to the wind, 'I remember EVERYONE!  Mwah!  EVERYONE!  Mwah!'

And he moves to New York City and everything continues to fall magically into place.

Ryan O'Patrick, four-leaf clover finder, the only boy to mystify the mystical cat, Ann-Margret tamer, roamer of lucky New York streets.  All around Lucky Guy.

Ryan, I hope that  incredible job lands on your doorstep soon.  get back in touch with that LUCK.  And if you ever find you have too much luck, remember how awesome your big sister is and share...

XOXO!

the games we play....

i suppose we are born thinking games are a part of being human.  we play pat-a-cake as babies to improve our eye-hand coordination, invent mechanisms of learning via games and competition throughout grammar school and beyond.  we participate in sports. we invent contests at work to increase sales and productivity.  games are designed to challenge us and make us strive for more.

but when do games turn sour and malicious?

i have held a career in retail my whole working life.  starting at age 16 i began selling shoes.  and by now i've sold just about everything except cars and insurance policies.  i don't particularly enjoy it and it brings me uneasiness because i am living my 40-hour a week ritual among the games of humanity.  i have worked for large corporations, father/son businesses, non-profit museum shops and mid-sized rapidly-growing (and a few rapidly-declining) companies.  while there are the games among competitive coworkers in any field, it is an overwhelmingly difficult task to deal with the public at large.

shoplifting is the worst as they come.  just a few weeks ago i was tied up with two demanding customers who required urgent attention.  a man, about 40-50 years old, well-dressed, very 'normal' looking stood at the counter waiting for my assistance.  let's call him 'Larry.'  i told him i would be right with him as the first two customers continued rattling their 'needs' to me.  i paged for assistance.  a coworker arrived and asked the Larry if he needed help.  she showed him the location he was looking for and we continued to juggle all of our customers, bouncing between them all and answering questions as they came up.  i checked on Larry and he posed a challenging question which i went to the computer to research a bit.  i walked back to ask some more follow-up questions because i wasn't finding the right answers and he began to get a little 'short' with me.  i researched some more and he slowly stepped over to my computer and frustratingly said, 'forget it.  i'll go somewhere where they know what they are doing.'

fast forward two days and one of my employees, during my day off, began to locate cut and torn security tags around the department.  9 of them total.  my suspicions immediately went to Larry and after spending 2 hours viewing surveillance tapes from three different cameras, i see him sticking things in his pocket, keeping his hand there as he wriggles it around and gets the tag off, then shuffles them in between other items.

and there are a million more stories like this one, and others of outlandish customer expectations, arguments (some involving people screaming at me), people blaming me for corporate policies, trying to barter, etc.  perhaps it would be different if i were running that dream shop of my own and there was the pride of ownership involved, but for the time being, i am merely a vessel for the many strange behaviors of the consumer world.  until something more lucrative comes along, i have no choice but to put on my happy face and simply take it...

but what about the GAMES among all other aspects of society?  the vampire feeding frenzies of the arts, the strange 'fake' relationships that people create with those holding some sort of information they want, the game of PSYCHOLOGY, and of course that ubiquitous game of LOVE.

games are a part of the natural order of all things human, but i feel the notion of good sportsmanship flew out the window once GREED constructed a new high-rise in the latest developing community.