HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-06-09, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2011. PAGE 5.
So this psychiatrist at the University of
Hertfordshire decides he wants to study
the phenomenon we call ‘luck’. He lines
up two groups of volunteers; the first group
consists of people who feel they were just
‘born lucky’. The other group leans to the
philosophy that they’d been short-changed by
‘The Fates’ and that life is unfair.
The shrink gives both groups copies of the
same newspaper and asks them to count the
photographs. He discovers that the people who
consider themselves unlucky take an average
of two minutes to count the photos; the ‘lucky’
ones are finished in mere seconds.
Why the spread? The ‘lucky’ folks spotted a
notice on the second page that read: “Stop
counting. There are 43 photographs in this
paper.” The unlucky group were too busy
concentrating on counting to spot the notice.
The shrink’s conclusion: “Unlucky people
miss chance opportunities because they are too
focused on looking for something else. They
go to a party intent on finding the perfect
partner, and so miss an opportunity to make
good friends….Lucky people are more relaxed
and open, and therefore see what is there
rather than just what they are looking for.”
A roundabout route to the oft-cited
observation that we frequently make our own
luck.
Frequently, but not always. Consider the
case of William Johnson – Blind Willie, to his
friends. He was blind because his mother
threw lye in his face when he was seven. Life
did not noticeably improve for Blind Willie in
the years that followed. He grew up
impoverished, illiterate and the wrong colour
during the Jim Crow years in his home state of
Texas. As a young man he was arrested for
‘inciting a riot’. He was only singing a gospel
song entitled “If I Had my Way I’d Tear the
Building Down” – but he sang it a tad too
fervently for the cops’ taste. They threw him in
jail.
Blind Willie died in 1945 at the age of 48 –
of hypothermia from sleeping in a sodden bed
in the ruins of his house which had burned
down two weeks previous.
Not a lot of luck there.
Or consider the life of Eugene Shoemaker
who dreamed of becoming an astronaut and
was on his way to achieving it when a routine
medical exam revealed he had Addison’s
disease.
Goodbye astronaut career.
But Shoemaker made his own luck. He took
up the study of meteor impact craters on earth
and on other planets. He got pretty good at it
too – 32 comets winging through the heavens
now bear his name. One of them, Shoemaker-
Levy 9, crashed into Jupiter in 1994. It was the
first collision of two solar system bodies ever
observed by human beings.
It was also an eerie harbinger of the fate that
awaited Shoemaker. Three years later the car
he was travelling in crashed and he was killed.
Here comes the lucky part.
His colleagues chose to honour him by
placing his ashes aboard a satellite being
launched to orbit the moon. It was done, and
when the satellite had completed its mission
and the battery was about to die, the craft was
deliberately crashed into the moon’s surface.
That’s where Shoemaker’s ashes will remain
for all time, in a titanium capsule inscribed
with words from Shakespeare:
“And, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
Blind Willie Jefferson didn’t end his life on
this planet either. His voice is travelling in
deep space aboard Voyager 1. It’s recorded on
a gold-plated audio-visual disc that includes
the sound of whales, a baby crying, ocean surf
– and Blind Willie singing “Dark Was the
Night, Cold Was the Ground”. It’s in a time
capsule gift from Earth to whoever, whatever
is out there and has the technological
capability to appreciate it. The experts don’t
know how many millennia Willie’s song will
soar through space, but the ship is bound for
the outer limits of our solar system.
Eugene Shoemaker’s ashes in an urn on the
moon; Blind Willie Johnson’s gravelly bass
singing the blues for eternity across the
cosmos…
You and I should get so lucky.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Luck often favours the lucky
Everyone has seen them. They’re an
epidemic among today’s youth, because
today’s youth is told they’re something
they can’t live without when they decide to tie
the knot. This sip of water after a jaunt through
the Sahara Desert? Engagement photos.
Now, I have no problem with a couple
wanting to have some engagement photos
taken, and then, of course, wedding pictures, I
just wonder what some couples are trying to
accomplish with these pictures.
No offense to my photographer friends, and
I do have a few (maybe used to have a few after
this), but I guess I just don’t see the point of
some poses, scenarios or efforts put into taking
the ‘perfect’ engagement picture.
I have seen plenty of good ones. Some
friends of mine live in Toronto, down by the
lake, and they went to the lake to take pictures.
Makes sense. But for every good one, I’ve seen
five that make me scratch my head.
These pictures are their own animal. There
are classic poses that are becoming ‘standard’
in the engagement photo world.
Now there are people who have heard me
drone on about the costs associated with
weddings, the superfluous planning that goes
into these things and my problem with big
weddings, and they seem to think that I just
hate marriage. This is not the case.
I have told this story a million times, but the
best wedding I have ever been to was the one I
emceed. (This proves one thing: I’m not so
much a fan of weddings as I am of myself.)
It was a small affair with less than 100
people and the bride and groom were able to
hug and shake hands with everyone there
without having to go into overtime and there
was a buffet dinner, not countless courses of
food you can’t pronounce meant to impress the
mind, rather than stimulate the taste buds.
To make a long story short, it was simple; it
was about relationships and it was intimate,
and the wedding pictures followed suit. There
was one photographer buzzing around, taking
candid shots of everyone, producing some of
the most beautiful moments you could ever
hope to see.
Which leads me back to engagement photos.
I have to wonder where hundreds of pictures in
front of a barn work into the relationship of a
couple from Toronto. I have to wonder why
every second set of engagement photos I’ve
ever seen have been taken at railroad tracks.
Last time I checked, neither the bride or the
groom worked for CN. And even if they did,
why is this man who doesn’t play the guitar
pretending to do so whilst sitting on the tracks?
And then there’s the classic ‘let’s hold hands
around something’ shot. I can count how many
times Jess and I have held hands around a tree
on one hand and while counting, that one hand
would be balled into a fist (meaning never).
There’s the ‘longing for you’ picture where
the man is in focus about 50 feet behind the
bride while he gazes at her. Definitely not sure
that I get that one. Oh, and then there’s the ‘too
graphic for an engagement photo’ photo. This
one takes place on a beach whilst a couple rolls
around in the sand doing their best From Here
To Eternity impression. I’m sure they couldn’t
wait to show that one to Grandma.
There really are too many to name and each
one is more outlandish than the last.
So no, I’m not against marriage, I just think
it worked fine decades ago without ice
sculptures and chocolate fountains, picking
your ‘wedding colours’ before you’re even
engaged and pictures of a groom and his
groomsmen making their way through a mall’s
revolving door.
Blood on the tracks
I’m not usually one to fall for television
advertisements, their magic was lost on me
when I was younger, and since then, I’ve
been wise to their ways.
The scene that I’ll start with is the living
room of my youth in Seaforth.
I sat with my mother watching television
and a commercial came on.
I can’t remember what it was for now, but at
that point, the commercial really made an
impact on me.
The commercial had nothing at all to do
with the product it was peddling (and before
you ask, no, there were no scantily clad
women or fast cars being used to sell
something that has nothing to do with scantily
clad women or fast cars).
If I remember correctly, two people were
talking about a product, for argument’s sake,
let’s call it an investment opportunity.
One person looks the part of an investment
banker, but turns out to be a janitor late for a
job interview. The two had been talking about
investing, and the other person, a banker if
memory serves me correctly, was amazed that
this janitor knew so much about investing.
It turns out that the commercial was about
health care.
I turned to my mother and asked what the
point of the commercial was. She responded
by asking me one simple question.
“Do you remember what company the
commercial was for?”
I answered yes, it was for a certain state’s
Blue Cross and Blue Shield coverage.
She looked at me until I got it – the
commercial had piqued my interest by being
utterly horrible, and I now remembered the
name of a health insurance company.
Sure it didn’t serve me very well, it was an
American company, but I remembered it, and
still do to this day.
Who knows, maybe if I move to the states,
I’ll subconsciously picked a Blue Cross Blue
Shield company based on that memory.
Anyway – that’s why I don’t put much stock
in television commercials anymore. All it
takes is that one memory and you start to
realize that commercials are just like
magicians; a little misdirection leads you to
remembering what they want you to.
Television (and maybe film to some extent)
is the only media where this happens. Print
and radio advertisements typically hype the
product they’re peddling.
Anyway, that was a pretty long tangent, but
back to the main story – recently, my toilet
broke.
My immediate reaction was to don a set of
coveralls, a red shirt, a red hat and a comically
large stereotypical Italian mustache like
Nintendo’s plumber/hero Super Mario, jump
down the pipes and start squishing Goombas...
or it would have been had I been able to find a
hat with a red “M” on it.
My second reaction was to buy a
replacement part.
I’m not big on the whole handyman thing,
but I’ve had to fix a toilet or three. My
experiences in the service industry, and
sharing two bathrooms with five other male
roommates in university, made knowing how
to get the toilet up and running a necessity.
After some kajiggering of the finest quality,
I had the toilet up and running.
At that point in time I sighed, collapsed on
the floor and turned the water back on to the
tank.
I congratulated myself, saying if I couldn’t
be a plumber saving a princess from a
dragon/turtle-like thing, I could at least be a
master plumber (plumbers, please don’t take
offense to that, and do keep reading, it will
explain why that thought popped into my
head. Whether you stomp on goombas or
whether you get pipes flowing as they should,
you’re all tops in my book).
Unbeknownst to me, that “master plumber”
line wasn’t my own.
A day or three later I was cleaning up the
washroom and noticed that the brand name of
the replacement part I had bought was “Master
Plumber”.
It didn’t really occur to me that I had
allowed myself to be taken in by a stark red
block letter font on a white background, but
hey, there I was.
Things have a habit of getting into our
heads, don’t they.
Whether it’s that song you either can’t stand
or love (and if you love it, it can’t be in your
room, it has to be in some car across the street)
or whether it’s the name of the replacement
stopper you just bought for your toilet, names,
places and things have a tendency to implant
themselves in our minds.
Now every time I step into my washroom,
I’m reminded that my toilet works thanks to a
little luck, a little elbow grease and Master
Plumber.
It got me thinking, how many other things
do I do because of connections in my brain
I’m barely aware of?
There’s the simple things, like this old air
freshener my mom had. It smelled like, and
was shaped like, a gingerbread man.
Every time I see or smell a gingerbread man,
I’m taken back to family holidays and I find
myself wanting to buy an apple pie (as that
was the typical dessert).
Two Sundays ago I stood at the back of my
house looking out into that impressive
downpour we received. Aside from getting a
bit wet, I was also assaulted by the smell of
rain during a warm day drifting in the window.
It took me back Florida where I have often
experienced a similar smell.
What other connections exist? Who knows,
maybe those impulse buys have more to them
than just a spur-of-the-moment desire.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
I am the Master Plumber