I often joke with coworkers that I am a hazard to be around. Most of them laugh off this idea, but I swear it’s true. I travel to Denver on business – within 2 days of my departure, a guy decides to shoot up the capital building right down the street from my hotel and a woman gets arrested in the airport after repeatedly hitting her child in a plane. Then I go to Boston. Again, within a few days after I leave, a woman offering “massage services” gets shot and killed in the same hotel I lived in.
This has happened too many times to count, but a last case I will bother to mention is when a couple of coworkers and I went to Tivoli in Copenhagen this summer. We were sitting at a cafe having a beer and I told them about some of the more recent incidences. They again laughed it off as a joke, but then the next morning, the following happened:
Yeah, see those chairs and tables the car crashed into? That is exactly where we were sitting when I told them about this. By this point, I am feeling like the character Indrid Cole from The Mothman Prophecies.
Nothing of this exact nature has happened lately, but I have had some bad luck with led me to reflect a bit on how I (somehow) seem to be a black cat spreading bad luck with everyone and everything that crosses my path. First point of bad luck: some woman drove into my car on the freeway. This in itself is enough to upset anyone, but when we drove over to the shoulder, the first thing that came out of this woman’s mouth was that my car was already in this condition when she it it. She didn’t deny hitting my car, she just denied being at fault for any damage. So what do you say to this? If you are me, your sarcasm gene kicks in and you reply to this dumb comment by someone who you can only figure is in shock: “Yeah… I drove from work today with my back bumper in the trunk… Of course! How could I forget that?” Hmm, maybe not the nicest move on my part, but since there was no “are you ok?” from this woman, I figure we could skip the niceties.
The next morning I was still knocked a bit loopy. I was in shock that this woman had behaved in this manner. I was absolutely livid and since the accident, she had refused to answer her phone so I could get her insurance information. I grew up in the US and saw a deal of foolish lawsuits – for example, we all now that you can get millions from McDonalds if you spill hot coffee in your lap while driving. I get why you would want to limit frivolous lawsuits, but man… that morning after, I wanted a lawyer.
Second point of bad luck: we are all getting sick. This weekend child 1 and 2 both got sick. How did we discover that this happened? Child 1 woke up screaming because she had gotten sick on her own head and Child 2 woke me up by getting sick on my head. Well, not head, but in my hoodie. Mmmmm… I am home today while my car is in the shop and my kids are under the weather. What a week already…Maybe it’s bad mojo coming home to roost because that other driver a freak napalming accident (no, I’m not bitter at all).
