If I Didn’t Have Bad Luck I’d Have No Luck at All by David Molina

If I Didn’t Have Bad Luck

I’d Have No Luck at All

I don’t know why, but I just have bad luck with cars. Or anything with a small gas engine for that matter. And now that I come down to thinking about it, with computers, women, and small mammals. I could go on all day with just these few categories, and go on another month for the next bunch.

And I don’t know why I am so unlucky. Probably was born under a bad sign, a bad moon, maybe bad anesthesia for my mother’s C-section, which I should have taken as indicative for the hard times ahead. But what the hell did I know, being a scrawny babe at that moment in time.

Here’s an example that includes both cars and small engines both at the same time. I’ve had more than my fair share of double-whammies, and triple-whammies, and grand-slammy whammies. I guess this would be a triple whammy.

I was planning on mowing down in the lower 5 acres in early spring.  I almost sprained my back trying to start the dang engine, when I realized my tractor didn’t have a starting cord and I was yanking on the blower instead. Once I figured that out, I realized that my dormant-all-winter riding mower’s battery was dead. I tried to jump it, but no go. Always can’t quite figure out was it positive to negative, or positive to positive? So I tried both ways, and neither worked particularly better than the other.

So i disassembled the battery from the tractor, thinking this is kind of like my mother’s C-section, and hoping nothing badder than average would happen in doing so. But fortunately the battery was dead. Real dead dead. So that was a little bit of good luck for a change, as fate would have it.

But then I had an even better break at the auto parts store whilst I slid the dead battery across the counter, and Leroy the parts guy got out his bifocals, looked me up and down as if wondering if this was deja vu all over again, and squinted to read the date of purchase. Which turned out to be less than a year, and so Leroy he gave me a brand new battery. He muttered something about this sort of thing happening on a close-to-yearly basis. 

So after trying to sort out the positive-negative thing again, we were back in business and I headed down the hill. We had sufficient rain that spring to give the wildflowers (soon to become dry weeds) a pretty good soaking, and as I was mowing a low spot, I had the misfortune to land in a pretty good little puddle. My back wheels spun and spun and in a short time had made the good little puddle into a darn good little mud-hole. By the time I realized that I was not going any which way but down, I was up to my axle. So I shut off the engine, and hopped off, trying to use the old heave ho. Now my boots were taking water, I was slipping and sliding, and the tractor was not budging. Just my luck.

So this brainstorm hits me like a lightning bolt and I think to myself, I need some bigger wheels to pull this off. So I go back up the hill, with my boots making a mournful sort of squishy sound, and grab a tow rope, jump in my truck, and head down to the meadow. I run the tow rope around the front axle of the tractor, tie the other end to the truck, and put it in reverse. The truck, not the tractor, in case you are confused.

Well I soon learned that to my consternation, neither the tractor, nor the truck, were going anywhere. The truck’s rear wheels were now spinning around and around in a sort of conspiracy with the tractor if you ask me. And now the truck’s wheels are sinking in the wet sodden field.

Long shory stort - (an obvious attempt at strategy so as not to reveal other embarrassments on the author’s part) - I had to call a tow truck driven by a total stranger who somehow seemed to be on the verge of laughter the whole time. This guy—who thankfully seemed to have better luck than I had in these sorts of situations—parked his truck on the asphalt road and let loose a hefty cable which he ran across the meadow to my truck. He winched in the truck as easy as reeling in a trout. I also have pretty bad luck with that, meaning the trout, but he was a paid professional and probably for that reason helped overcome my string of bad luck. Next he reeled in my tractor, as easy as reeling in a sardine. So we were back to start, except that I owed the guy a pretty good chunk of change, so that wasn’t so lucky either.

So luckily I waited until the meadow dried out, and luckily i didn’t start a grass fire because that can happen if you’re not lucky. And I can tell you some stories about that.