Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
Luck.
“The definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” My mother said this to us many times when we were growing up. It has a nice “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” Americana feel about it, a nod to the work ethic bestowed upon us by our Puritan ancestors.
That is not, however, the definition of luck. This is how it is described according to Webster’s, Oxford, and Cambridge dictionaries:
“To prosper or succeed, especially through chance or good fortune.”
“Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.”
“The phenomenon and belief that defines the experience of improbable events, especially improbably positive or negative ones.”
I have a good friend who, over the years, has consistently referred to the relative success of my acting career as being due to a string of good luck. Of course, my not terribly tender but still existent ego has always bristled at the suggestion. After all, I have clocked the hours, spent years building and earning a good reputation. I have been working steadily for nearly forty years, so maybe it’s not just “dumb luck.”
Nanny Nanny Nanny Goat!!
Or maybe it was. There is, after all, the accident of our origins. I am white and born in America, a country which has historically partial to white folks. I am tall with a pretty good set of genes, and I was drawn to and gifted at acting from early childhood. That seems pretty lucky on the face of things. I have mentioned the matter of luck quite frequently in these pages because I am often confounded by the concept.
Had I been born in a Third World nation—what our charming president often refers to as a “shithole country,”—my chances of applying myself to any craft would be slim to none. The meaning of luck would change drastically. I would be lucky to be alive, to find food for myself and my family. Lucky not to succumb to a disease that I was unlucky enough not to be vaccinated for. Of course, we are all lucky on that count, but opportunity is a gift not afforded to everyone. So maybe Mom was right about that part.
“Luck, let a gentleman see
How great a dame you can be
I know the way you’ve treated other guys you’ve been with
Luck be a lady with me.”
From “Luck Be a Lady”
I find myself singing this song under my breath from time to time. I have no idea how I learned it. I know it was a Sinatra song and a huge hit and that it originated in the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls in 1950. I find it interesting that luck was given a female characteristic back then. Women’s lives were pretty much determined by the men they were fated to be born to or to marry. While some fortunate women were able to earn salaries and thereby could ostensibly take care of themselves, they were prohibited from having bank accounts in their names. This made things a bit difficult.
So, were they lucky because they could work or unlucky because they were denied financial services?
Feels like a trick question sometimes.
IN THE CARDS.
I played in a charity poker event recently. I was one of the “celebrities” that anchored the many Texas Hold’em games strewn around the room. The place was lively; the tables packed with eager participants. A dozen or so alternate players were waiting in the wings for one of us to go bust so that they could take their shot. I was at a table with mostly very amateur players, and I would count myself among them. I had not played in a very long time and was rusty on the rules, and wracking my brain for strategies long forgotten.
The dealer was very professional and kept us all on track. I had several good hands, but a few clunkers too. I folded when I should have bet and bet when I should have folded a few times, so there was plenty of “user error,” but I was doing well overall, and it was for a good cause. Fun.
The “blinds” kept being raised, which is poker’s way of determining the minimum bet. It was about two hours in when it began to cost $6,000 to see the cards that would be dealt in what is called the “flop.” Double dang. I bided my time. My fairly substantial winnings would head down the drain quickly with 6K as merely the opening bid. There was no limit on what folks could raise. Things could get really expensive, really fast.
By that time, a lot of people, including many of the alternate players, had gone bust, and the mood was still friendly but had a bit more edge as the more talented players were trying to secure a place at the final table.…the Holy Grail of competitive poker. I folded rotten hand after rotten hand—a 9 of clubs with a 4 of diamonds, and on and on. Non-starters all. Then I caught a break—Pocket Queens—a very good draw.
“I’m all in,” I said, pushing my chips forward onto the felted part of the table in front of me and trying to maintain a neutral expression. I was pretty sure I had that hand in the bag, and the stakes were high enough for me to rake in quite a bundle. The fellow to my left called me and showed his hand. Pocket Aces. Dang. I was out of the game. It’s not real money anyway--it was all for charity--but I still felt disappointed for a minute.
Was I lucky to have drawn the queens? Unlucky because my tablemate drew the aces?
Tough question in some ways, but then there is the whole “accident of our origins” thing, so I am going to go with lucky.
When I was sixteen, I moved to Pasadena to attend school at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I found a room in the home of an older woman, Mrs. Snyder, the mother of someone my mom had worked with. Lucky. Once I had my few possessions stored, I began in earnest to look for a job. I had to support myself during the year, and when you were under 18, it was very hard to find any decent-paying work.
So, I lied, of course.
One of the places that I applied was a coffee shop located on Colorado Blvd., which, at the time, was the great dividing line of the old city. Pasadena had a very racist bent back then: Blacks could live above Colorado Blvd., while whites stuck to below. This was fairly carefully observed. A few of my white classmates who had strayed into the black part of town were pulled over by police and warned that they did not belong there.
I lied on the application, fudging my birthdate and my work experience. I was in the waiting area with several other women who were also applying for the position, many of whom were people of color. All of us needed the work, and most of them were more qualified and more importantly of legal age, but I got hired. It was a grueling year—working long hours in the afternoons and evenings and attending class during the day—but I knew for sure that I was lucky.
There are those who would say it was a hardship to have to pay my own way, to have to work so, so hard to get where I wanted to go. It was hard, sometimes very hard, but I knew the day that I got that job, and have known every day since, that I was lucky to have the chance to find work that could sustain me while I pursued my dreams. Sure, there were lots of my peers who drew the Aces, who had parents who could foot the bill for their education, but I got the Queens, by God. I got to take my shot at succeeding in class, and I did not waste it.
Tens of thousands of Americans have lost their jobs in recent months. Whole swaths of California and North Carolina have burned, decimating homes and businesses. Then there are the park rangers and flight experts, and Social Security Counselors deemed to be a waste of funds by the Doge folks. However you feel about that, those people are hurting. In order to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps one needs to have boots. In order to work hard one needs to be able to find work.
If luck is chance, if luck is just happenstance, then we can definitely report that a lot of us have been unlucky of late …
Stupid, damnable, dumb, bad luck!
Now more than ever, I say this with conviction:
On we go …
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our valued subscribers whose support makes the publication of Wit and Wisdom possible. Thank you!
Share this post