What Good Luck, What Bad Luck

I usually tell people that my favorite book of all time is Great Expectations, but that isn’t exactly true. It is actually second. My real favorite book of all time is a kids book called ‘What Good Luck, What Bad Luck’. I like it because it tells you pretty much everything you need to know about life at a first grade level.

You should read it. I still have my copy, but you cannot borrow it. Well, maybe if you come over to my house and read it – but you can’t take it with you.

Anyway, on one page something good happens in this kids life, then on the next page something bad happens, then on the next page something good happens, then on the next page something bad happens, then on the next page something good happens, then on the next page something bad happens, then on the next page something good happens – get it?

So here is an example.

What good luck! Mike went on a Christmas vacation!
What bad luck! He went to visit relatives.
What good luck! People in Colorado couldn’t care less about BSU football!
What bad luck! Mike left his bike in Idaho.
What good luck! Mike’s in-laws got a new HD tv!
What bad luck! They use it to watch The View.
What good guck! It snowed a foot and there was a white Christmas!
What bad luck! Mike has to run for exercise.
What good luck! Running in a foot of snow is actually kind of fun!

You get the idea. Everything you need to know is in the book, and my vacation was, well, average I guess.

The highlight was Christmas dinner. No not the food. It was when someone offered my 6 year old son some cheesy broccoli casserole and he replies with ‘That’s like giving a madman a loaded gun and a pile of crack!’

That’s Pulitzer stuff there, that is.

I don’t know where he gets it.

As good as that was, it was know where near as entertaining as my wife’s 80 year old grandma almost falling over laughing. And that wasn’t as good as the look on my mother-in-laws face (I didn’t know eyes could pop out like that in real life). And that wasn’t as good as my father-in-law spraying food out his mouth. Yeah, good times.

I would have to say that the low light was getting on the return flight sitting behind people all bedecked in new BSU gear. Ugh. But that wasn’t quite as bad as when I noticed on the flight safety card that our plane was built in Brazil. Seriously? Brazil? Um, they make airplanes there? Ooo—kay. But that wasn’t quite as bad as when the airline maintenance guy came on board before takeoff carrying nothing but a roll of duct tape. And that wasn’t quite as bad when I saw him using the roll of duct tape as a hammer to fix something in the back of the plane. That was below average.

So yeah. Everything I needed to know about life was in that book – ‘What Good Luck, What Bad Luck’.

Happy New Year everybody.