Bob

Batz

Read Bob's bio and previous columns

February 18, 2008

If It Weren’t for Bad Luck . . .

I’ve always figured life is about little triumphs instead of major victories.

Life isn’t winning a million dollars in the lottery. Life is buying a clothing item marked “one size fits all” and the damned thing actually fits.

Or refolding a road map on the very first try.

I guess I feel like that because I’m not what you would call a lucky person. To put it another way, if I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.

I’m easy to spot on the streets of the city. I’m the guy who finds himself plodding along behind a city bus every afternoon at rush hour.

My wife Sally and I bought an artificial Christmas tree this year for the first time. All of the needles fell off two days after we decorated it.

I purchased snow tires for my car a few years ago. They melted four days later.

I’m the poor guy who always pulls into a service station for a fill-up just as the attendant is changing the sign out front from $3.09 to $3.65.

The last time I went shopping for a new car, I visited a dealership that ran an advertisement in the local newspaper promising  “NO REASONABLE OFFER REFUSED.”

I made the salesman an offer. He laughed for 10 minutes, then said, “You gotta be kidding, pal.”

Every time I go to the “express lane” at a department store, I find 2,000 other shoppers ahead of me.

The same is true when I stop at a grocery checkout counter where there’s a sign advising “20 items or less” and the guy in front of me always has enough groceries in his cart to feed most of the people living in Rhode Island.

Some people have a knack for finding parking spots two steps from the entrance at a mall.         The last time I was at a mall, I had to call a cab to get me from my car to the front door.

Every time I forget my umbrella it rains.

The other day Sally and I bought our granddaughter Morgan a new toy. When I opened the box, I discovered we had to assemble the toy, but that didn’t bother us because there was a label on the box that read “So easy a child can do it.”

For three hours we tried unsuccessfully to put the toy together. That’s when I asked Morgan to help us do it.

She was playing with the toy in less than five minutes. She’s three years old.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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