COLUMN: Bow your head and be thankful
So, did you see the little news item a while back about the Virginia couple – Clyde and Edith Shinault – who won the state lottery … for the second time?
Now wait a minute. We’ve been told for decades that the chance of winning the lottery are about the same as having space junk fall on us or being hit by lightning.
The odds of winning this one were calculated to be 1.2 million-to-one. The odds of winning two were, well, off the chart. The Shinaults will now receive quarterly checks worth $13,000 before taxes. The couple continues to receive a $335,000 check each May from their first jackpot.
Not long after hitting that jackpot, both were diagnosed with cancer but have now recovered. “Our doctors tell us we’re cancer-free,” Clyde Shinault said. “I’d rather hear that news than hit the lottery.”
They admit they haven’t given up on playing the lottery, though. “We could hit it again,” Clyde said.
Wow, which was luckier – the lottery or the cancer in remission?
And speaking of being hit by lightning, how about Roy Sullivan, the Virginia forest ranger (wow, two weird stories both from Virginia … what are the odds of that?) who figures he has been hit by lightning seven times, blaming the phenomenon on some sort of chemical magnetism. Weathermen tell us that about 150 people get hit by lightning each week during the summer in the United States. Should we consider ourselves lucky simply because we haven’t? Should Roy consider himself unlucky because he has? Or lucky that he lives to talk about it? Can you be both lucky and unlucky at the same time, regarding the same event?
I bring up these obscure references because a while back, while playing basketball, I turned an ankle – actually tore some ligaments. As I was trying to get some blood back in my face, limping off, a well-meaning teammate came up to me and said, “You’re lucky it wasn’t your knee.” Seems I was somehow supposed to feel lucky at this precise moment.
I wonder if this dutiful reaction to bad luck – insisting that it really is good luck, because it could have been worse – has its roots in religion. Or is it just positive mental attitude? Is it part of an inborn desire to wish for things to turn out better?
Marie Trotter of Nashville was golfing and was hit by golf balls three times from three different fairways. One ball got her in the back, another in the shoulder and the third on the neck. And, sure enough, she was dutifully told she was “lucky she didn’t need medical attention.” One more fairway and it would have been fore, by the way.
A spry gentleman by the name of Oliver Anthony was golfing with his wife on hole No. 7 of the Davy Crocket Public Golf Course in Frayser, Tenn., when a man jumped out of some bushes on the edge of the course, wielding a gun. He wanted money and Oliver wanted to make him earn it. Oliver gripped the club in baseball bat fashion and told him he better move on “or I was going to wrap a club around his head.” He took a swing and the shooter moved back and ran to the bushes, firing four times as he ran. When the couple returned to the clubhouse, they found one of the bullets had lodged in a golf ball that Oliver was carrying in his back pocket.
So, it was lucky the robber was there that day so OIiver could experience such luck or else the luck would gone unused. Or something like that, right?
So as you surrounded your turkey last week, did you feel thankful, grateful … or just plain lucky? Bigger rhetorical question: Is there a difference?
I must tell you, I felt lucky/thankful that I have never had to sit through an ice show at the Delta Center; that I have no interest in NASCAR; that I never have had hay fever. I feel lucky/thankful to live where there are four seasons, even though I feel lucky/thankful that this last snow storm was a half-hour behind me all the way home from Boise. I feel lucky/thankful that I have two neighbors with snowblowers.
I feel lucky/thankful that some newspapers are hanging in there, including this one. I feel lucky/thankful for the spirit of Section F. I feel lucky/thankful that my grandkids like coming over to my house. And I guess when it comes right down to it, I feel thankful that I have both good and bad luck, lest I get spoiled.
But I am grateful it wasn’t my knee.
Jay Wamsley is the director of The Utah Statesman