Some People Get All The Luck

Some people have all the luck. You know that mysterious person who won the big $36 million Lotto jackpot about a mile from where I live? Well, it wasn’t me. I never win anything.
I take that back. I did get a bottle cap once where I won $10 off a purchase of $50 or more at FootLocker. But my luck has changed. Even my fortune cookie at Peking Dragon was promising this time. Usually it says something like “You are rich in friends” which is nice, but rich in cash is good too. But this time I got “A thrilling event is in your immediate future.” Yahoo! Even my husband perked up at that message.
What I didn’t realize was my thrilling event turned out to be a flu shot.
There was a time--say a month ago--when getting a flu shot was like changing the battery in your smoke detector. A hassle, a nuisance, but no big deal, you do it. Now, getting a flu shot if you are under the age of 65 is like winning the lottery. Lucky me!
I casually got a flu shot from my kids’ pediatrician. I happened to be there, the office had plenty, double the shipment of last year, and—prick—I was vaccinated. Of course this happened about three minutes before the breaking news hit the major networks. The flu shot supply had suddenly dropped out of “supply and demand” and there I was, sitting pretty with a Donald Duck Band-Aid on my arm.
Of course with enormous good fortune comes enormous guilt. They don’t tell you that part on the Lotto billboard. You become a “Have” in a world of “Have-Nots.” The first inkling of the psychic price I would pay came in a testy phone call from my mother.
Let me backtrack for a moment and warn you that my mother recently had a bit of a tussle with a curb and the curb won. So now she is in two casts and a wheelchair and feeling, shall we say, a shade irritable. It doesn’t help that my dad keeps finding all the chocolate bars I’ve been slipping to in her People magazines and putting them up on very high shelves.
So she starts right in on me. How does it feel to be the only able bodied young adult in America to bamboozle a flu shot?
Good, actually.
But I say nothing, instead letting her rant about trying to find a flu shot or a ticket for a flu shot or a rumor of a ticket for a flu shot. Finally, it’s decided that Costco and a three-hour line is mom and dad’s best bet.
I say brightly, “At least you have a comfy chair to sit in and you get to go to Costco. How good is that?”
The silence was piercing. I tried to back pedal by reminding mom that she could blow off Costco. After all, she really didn’t need to worry about catching the flu since her injuries would keep her safely ensconced at home for the next six weeks, far from friends, and fun, and germs.
She must have broken her sense of humor along with her foot and her wrist because she didn’t even laugh. I decided I’d better not to ask her to pick up a rotisserie chicken for me.
A couple days later, we are back at the pediatrician’s office. The doctor enters the room, pins me with her piercing stare and I sort of squirm uncomfortably. I don’t think today would be a good day to ask for a flu shot. She says only four words: “You are so lucky.”
Yeah, I know. Lucky me.