PORCH PONDERINGS

Amazing Luck

31. Unlucky Day
Write about a time when you were particularly unlucky.

My son was unlucky every time the moon was full on a Saturday night. Weird. I could always count on an ER visit when that happened.

I had a year when I had three car accidents. Now they weren’t all my fault. One was serious, and I still have the effects to this day. The other two were just bothersome. But I have to say by the time the third happened, I was a basket case.

I found some interesting information on the internet about writers and luck:

Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap that lodged in his throat, likely after a bout of heavy drinking. Sherwood Anderson accidentally ingested a toothpick, which punctured internal organs; he died of the resulting infection. Lord Byron caught a fatal infection when doctors used leeches while attempting to cure a fever. Stephen King was hit and nearly killed by an inattentive driver while taking a walk on a country road in Maine. King commented about that incident on Twitter, “On June 19th, 1999, I got hit by a van while taking a walk. As I lay unconscious in the hospital, the docs debated amputating my right leg and decided it could stay, on a trial basis. I got better. Every day of the 20 years since has been a gift.”

Most of us live with a reasonable sense of security and stability, ignoring the everyday precariousness of our existence. We live on a planet traveling through space at 67,000 miles per hour that has, over time, been struck by asteroids that eliminated almost all life and been plagued by a variety of viruses and bacteria that challenge our immune systems while climate disruption threatens the survival of humankind.
It’s all fodder for the imaginative writer.

And I have to say, if you cannot find something fun, something interesting, something weird, something unusual to write about this past year, then you just haven’t been paying attention. We've all been pretty lucky, don't you think? So stop feeling sorry for yourself and start looking around. All the clues are there. Piece them all together and write something amazing.