Some people are just born lucky

Knowing me and seeing a title like that, you are probably expecting some heart-warming story of a guy who was born with no arms and legs and, through sheer courage and ingenuity, with a cheerful spirit, turned this supposed handicap into a fruitful career as a muppet. Nope. I think that would still be a sad story, after all...how much did the Muppets get paid to roam around telling really bad jokes while having someone's hands up their posterior?
Or perhaps it will be a joke laden festival of cracks on bankrobbers walking under ladders, avoiding the paint bucket but getting popped by the falling wheelbarrow of concrete and becoming hardened criminals. But no, not that either.
Perhaps with a title like that we will turn to the child of multi-billionaires who proved fast, strong, and athletic and went on to a successful career as a juggler in the Cirque d'Soleil? No, not that either.
No, sometimes luck has a lot to do with time and place, and lately I have been feeling pretty lucky. Oh, not in my scholastic life where my hatred of the immersion system of language learning is so high that I deliberately skipped class and went to play. Those of you who know me and know of my smurf-retentiveness about my grades, there is a clue to how I feel about it. Oh, and in my other class, the paper I planned to write this weekend, we recently learned the instructor is leaving for Europe this weekend, hence the paper must be turned in Thursday. So yeah...scholastically, things are rougher than they have ever been so I am not feeling too lucky there.
So maybe it is in the family life. Let's check in: well, two people to remain nameless are stirring up, as they are wont to do, trouble in the family circle that is insipid, banal, pointless, and counterproductive. As a result, I see my brothers and father much less than I would like to...so I am going to go with no, that isn't why I feel lucky.
Or perhaps it is because I have a lovely fiance who is thoughtful, caring, fun, thinks I am funny, we like the same things, think the same way about needing time for ourselves, we spend ridiculous amounts of time doing unsolicited stuff for each other because we want to make the other one happy, and are deep in exciting stages of planning the wedding festivities. You would certainly think something like that would make a person feel lucky. And it does. But that still isn't the real reason.
After all, lots of people encounter this. A lot of people find that one person that makes them feel special and loved, that makes them happy to do stuff they normally hate...seriously, with how I feel about gardening, for me to voluntarily and unexpectedly spend 3 or 4 hours not just weeding but then planting flowers....this is a genuine miracle that we shan't expect to see repeated often. Except...it will be. Because the reason I was doing it actually made it...wait for it...fun. And that there is why I feel lucky.
Because it IS possible for someone like me to change. It is possible for me to become a better, more caring person who will put the interests of another above my own interests. Because it is possible for me to find in another person something that wants me to bring joy to their life at every possible opportunity.
I feel lucky because I did everything possible to ruin that. I did everything in my power to convince her I would always be the lone wolf, unable, unwilling, and undesirous of letting anyone else close to me. I feel lucky that nobody else came along and treated her right.
No cliche'd platitudes about being the luckiest man alive, no insipid "the whole world is better", just this; every time I think about where my life has gone in the past and where it sits now, and every time I think about the wonderful girl I have been blessed with...yeah, I feel like I was born lucky.