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Catastrophe |
You may say it's a curse or that black cat you tripped
on this morning. It could be Nemesis pinching your ear
for accidentally killing your grandfather's goldfish
when you were three, or just plain bad luck. Bad luck
is a pretty flexible word, though. It could include
anything, from coffee spilling on your new shirt to
getting yourself electrocuted while changing a light
bulb. So I'm just sitting here as contented as
anything, writing this article and listening to
Mozart, and then suddenly the ceiling falls down right
on my head. Could you put that in the same category of
bad luck as missing the bus? Come on, be fair! If I
could divide bad luck into categories like mild,
medium and real bad luck, I'd put the ceiling story in
a milder category than missing the bus. You know why?
Because at least when the ceiling falls on my head
it's a swift, painless death (provided a real big
chunk of it falls down). But standing in the middle of
a thunderstorm to find a cab, now that's what I call
catastrophe!
But never mind all that. Sometimes bad luck takes it a
bit too far testing one's patience. I believe that bad
luck's just some sort of imp somewhere that really
gets a kick out of making our lives miserable. I can
picture it right there, sitting on top of my monitor,
dangling its feet and smiling impishly (well, it's an
imp, isn't it?), and preparing to make my system crash
or something. Now isn't that sweet? I'd be losing all
my data, and it'd be as infernally happy as a divorce
lawyer getting paid. But all that still doesn't count
as bad luck compared to what one of my friends has
been through a couple of months ago. Now listen
carefully and consider yourselves really lucky!
This friend of mine had a car, a Mercedes convertible
that was her pride and joy. Not everyone has a
Mercedes convertible these days, as you may already
have realized, and that's why this white, flashy work
of art was always very well taken care of. She was
only this close to taking it up to her apartment for
all I know! How she got the car is unimportant, as it
will lead us into a long story of other people's
misfortunes (keeping in mind that my friend here is
actually a divorce lawyer). Anyway, a couple of months
ago, she parked the car very carefully in the parking
lot two blocks away from her place and just walked
away. Two hours later it wasn't there. Who took it or
how they took it will forever remain an unsolved
mystery. She panicked, called the entire navy and
nearly had a stroke. However, she had a very important
meeting with a client that day (a lawyer has to eat,
you know, and buy a new Mercedes convertible as well,
just in case the old one couldn't be found), so she
just took a cab and prayed for the best all the way to
the meeting.
Half-way through the meeting they called to inform her
that the car might have been found. So far so good,
right? Wrong! The car was found indeed, and inside it
were a gun and almost a kilogram of dope. These things
happen, you know; it could happen to you. Remember the
ceiling thing? Anyway, there was my friend, all power
suit and nervous breakdown, sitting for interrogation
for nearly 11 hours! You must all remember that
divorce lawyers are cunning weasels, but they're not
as tough as other lawyers. She was in tears all
through the procedure, but finally they let her go
after an endless series of tests proved that the stuff
in her car wasn't hers at all.
No, no, don't let this sigh of relief out yet! I
promised you a disaster, and that's exactly what
you're getting! The car was confiscated of course, and
to get it back she would have to wait until the owner
of the gun and the dope was found, which would be a
year, give or take a few months. She nearly had a fit
when she heard that, but life must go on, so she
borrowed her sister's Beetle. Just for you to know, it
was an old, battered Beetle, not the cool new one. To
know how that feels, you only have to live in Bel Air
for three years then move into a hut in the jungles of
Zimbabwe. It sure did hurt, and she had to park it
about ten blocks away so that no one would see her
getting out of such a shameful garbage can - no
offence, anyone who has a Beetle, but at the end of
the day a Mercedes is a Mercedes!
She kept the Beetle for three weeks. On the fourth
week, an officer came to tell her that the man had
been found and that she had to testify in court. Well,
she thought, it would be over in a minute and I'll get
my car back. Wrong again! She went to court on the
appointed date only to find out that the accused was
an accountant who used to work on her taxes. Obviously
the man had a drinking problem, among other issues,
and he didn't know it was her car he was stealing. He
was sore because he thought that somehow she had
gotten him into trouble, although all she had ever
done to him was buy the car that he stole! Anyway, the
man was pretty sore, and started talking about things
that shouldn't have been brought up. Now this friend
of mine didn't really get the Mercedes by being so
honest with her taxes. The man was in charge of making
things a lot cheaper for her by canceling things and
adding things, and the whole lot was brought up in
court and eventually investigated.
Feeling sorry for her? Think it was just very bad
luck? Not yet! The investigations took some time of
course, during which she had to stop working. But the
good side of the story was that she could get her car
back. She paid a small fortune to get it back,
although they had confiscated it in the first place,
and was just driving out of the parking lot the next
day, when a guy in a van crashed right into her. A
Mercedes is one of the strongest cars in the world,
but a van is even stronger, especially when the former
is almost stationary and the latter is flying at 50
mph. That was it. She got out of the car, went right
up to the van driver, and hit him on the head with
something that the doctors later said was "strong
enough to kill a horse, hadn't the man been really
tough.”
Later on at the police station, she kept gibbering
over and over about an imp that danced in the air
before her eyes. After the usual procedure she was
committed to a mental asylum. Don't be so sad for me
and my little injury, though. The doctors say I'll be fine in no time. But
you know what? I'm not crazy at all. I'm just hiding
here so that it doesn't happen to me again. The last
couple of months have been too much for my delicate
nerves, so I thought I'd just stay here for a while
and take it easy. Bad luck you say? That was far worse
than bad luck, and if I hear a word about bad luck
again, I swear to God I'll get whoever had said it and
that would be bad luck for them. Just give me a minute
to shoo that devilish imp away from the room and then
I'll come back to you.
copyright 2005
Hany Haggag Abdl
Mobdy |
