When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was entitled "Good Luck, Bad Luck." The narrative structure was pretty simple, you followed a boy as good and bad things happened to him. But it had such a brilliant structural simplicity, that the book was almost like a kind of poetic verse:
"Good luck, you get to fly an airplane"
"Bad luck, the airplane runs out of fuel mid-flight"
"Good luck, you have a parachute"
"Bad luck, there's a hole in the parachute"
"Good luck, you land in the water"
"Bad luck, there are sharks in the water...." and so on.
I feel like the structure of this book formed and reflected my impression of what life was like. Recently, I had an "We're not gonna make it" experience which I would like to use the "Good luck, bad luck" structure to tell:
Good luck, I am getting out of New York City for the summer and driving to Santa Fe
Bad luck, a day after leaving New York I discover my car is unsafe to drive
Good luck, it is only the struts which need fixing
Bad luck, the job will cost me all the money I have
Good luck, the tire company offers me a credit card with 0% interest for the first six months
Bad luck, after six months, the interest goes up to 22%
Good luck, the car makes it to Santa Fe in one piece
Bad luck, on my second night, I am rear-ended by an uninsured maniac who drives off laughing after I scream for help
Good luck, there doesn't appear to be any damage
Bad luck, when I take my car to the mechanic, I find out that there is damage and it will cost me
Good luck, my mechanic tells me that I should get my money back from the tire place as my new struts aren't really new
Bad luck, my struts now need to be replaced again, the second time in one month!
-- India
Wow, I had a weirdly similar moving-across-the-country-by-car-which-suffered-a-blow-at-the-hands-of-a-Santa-Fe-driver-and-altered-my-journey-in-complex-and-unforeseen-ways experience. I moved from Austin to Los Angeles three years ago in a '94 Saab with virtually everything I owned crammed in to the hatch. Before the trip I found a mechanic to do a "trip check".
ReplyDeleteGood luck, the mechanic wouldn't ask for much of the meager pile of tips I had saved for the move.
Bad luck, when I came to pick up the car I was told that, due to the sorry and irreparable state of nearly every system, the only reasonable plan of action would be to "just walk away".
Good luck, I gave the car a tune-up myself and it made through 13 hours of blazing Texas sun and no A/C to Santa Fe.
Bad luck, the day after arriving the car is totaled by a ubiquitous white pick-up after the driver decided not to make that left turn after all, but instead to back out of the intersection, very quickly, and, despite my honking and screaming, into/onto me.
Good luck, the car is insured! And since it looked relatively ok (before), and they hadn't spoken to the "just walk away" mechanic, I was awarded much, much more than it was worth or ever could have sold it for.
There was no obvious bad luck consequence to follow, but there was the realization that if the car hadn't been totaled it almost certainly would have ignited/disintegrated/melted/exploded some where between Flagstaff and Barstow which would have left me without a car and stranded, and also without the check from State Farm that effectively funded the move and probably several months of living in LA.