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Lucky S.O.B.

“Look, I’m telling you, I’m the luckiest son-of-a-bitch who ever lived! I’ll prove it — I’ll tell you about some of the things that happened to me,” said Lucas Mason.

She shrugged, “I’m glad you feel lucky, Mr. Mason, but you don’t have to prove anything to me.”

Lucas sat up a little straighter, “No, no, no, I insist. Just a few stories, and I’ll let you go, I promise. I want you to understand why I’m in such a good mood in this moment.”

“All right,” she said, leaning back in her chair, “I’m done with my shift, go ahead, talk to me.”

“Well, you see, I got food poisoning and almost died. I had to be rushed to the hospital. That’s how I met my wife.”

“Then, your wife is what, a nurse, a doctor?”

“No, my wife was the hospital chaplain. Still is and we’ve been together 12 years now. OK. Let me see … yes — the time I bought a boat, but it sank,” he said, smiling broadly.

“Yeah, I can see how that would make anyone happy.”

“Hold on. That’s not the good luck part. That came when my boat was found amongst the coral. What was found under the sunk boat was treasure that was buried there since the fifteenth century, complete with gold from France and England. The gold wound up INSIDE my boat — had stuck up through a hole in the hull, and through the arcane intricacies of maritime law about possession and piracy, I was permitted to keep it. I became incredibly, obscenely rich overnight,” Lucas concluded.

“Oh, I see now. That is lucky,” she said.

“Then there was a time I got kicked out of a bar in Christchurch, New Zealand. This was February, 2011. Does that date mean anything to you?”

She thought about it for a moment. “No. Should it?”

“Well, you probably don’t remember the exact day, but I bet you remember the event. It was the day of the huge earthquake there.”

“I remember now! It was all over the news for days. I remember feeling so sorry for those people!”

“It was pretty bad for a while. But the people were incredible, how quickly they mobilized, how organized they became. But that’s not what this story is about.