The Luck of the Irish

It's my lucky day. I woke up at seven minutes past seven on the seventh day of the seventh month in the year two-thousand seven. I woke up to the sound of my dog throwing up on the rug in our entry way. How much more fortunate can one man be? I went to see if perhaps she had been yakking up gold coins, or maybe simply announcing the arrival of my lottery winnings.
Wait a minute. I don't play the lottery. I don't tend to go in for games of chance ever since the kid down the street from me opened "Little Vegas" way back when I was about eleven years old. His casino opened in his parents garage, and came complete with rigged roulette wheel and a number of other fixed games. I watched as he bilked the younger kids in the neighborhood for their lunch money. Even now I am amazed at how easily people hand over their money for a chance to get rich quick.
A teacher friend of mine started his vacation by playing the ponies. When I saw him at a pub the other night, he was celebrating the five hundred dollars he had won on horse racing. It occurred to me only briefly to ask him how much he had invested prior to his big payoff, but that seemed like a definite buzzkill. The idea that you could get something for nothing is still awfully appealing.
Many years ago, my father was flying in a friend's small plane to the west coast to visit me, and they stopped in Tahoe, for gas and a little wager. He put five dollars down on the Colorado Avalanche to win the Stanley Cup. This was the kind of thing my father was prone to do, betting with his heart, since the Colorado Avalanche was essentially a brand new franchise, and no NHL team had ever won the Stanley Cup the year after relocating. By the end of the season, my father's dream had come true, and his parlay paid off at fifteen to one. He didn't get to pick that one up. I did. He died on the trip back to Colorado, and never had a chance to see it. I sent the ticket off to Nevada and they mailed me back seventy-five dollars. It only cost me the price of a stamp - and the opportunity to share it with my father. Lucky me.