Good Luck

The day starts out as it always does. Out the door at half past six for a full day

of teaching. It’s a long drive with five railroad crossings, three hidden driveways, and

five school zones. Twenty-seven miles of winding roads and a dozen curves demand

a slower speed.

The journey’s a mesmerizing one. The roadside’s a canopy of trees and blue

lakes. It’s a peaceful time for reflection and anticipation of what the day will bring. Not

far from home a black cat suddenly darts across the road in front of me.

I don’t think of myself as superstitious, but for a moment I want to turn back

and return home. I thought if I had just spilt salt I could always throw it over my

shoulder and be done with it. On the other hand, it’s good it isn’t a tortoiseshell-colored

cat and I’m not in Normandy because that means accidental death.

Other superstitions keep popping into my head. If you walk under a ladder you’ll

have bad luck or step on a crack you’ll break your mother’s back. It’s best to walk

around the ladder and avoid the crack-just to be safe. Superstition is the irrational

belief that an object, action or circumstance not logically related to a course of events

influences its outcome. The black cat syndrome followed me on my drive.

An old gray pickup truck towing an older trailer covered by a tarp passes me on

a double yellow line in between curves. Perhaps the black cat was bad luck. A few miles

further up the road and just before my first railroad crossing, a large square flat board lies

on the pavement in front of me. I drive over one edge of it because of on coming

cars in the opposite lane. After the bump I think, So far-so good.

Around the next hairpin curve a missile rolls towards me from the opposite

side of the road. It is a twenty-pound portable gas tank! My car clears the thing

and I look in the rear view mirror to see the cars behind me playing ring around the

posy.

Once again, thoughts of the black cat bringing bad luck are back and verified a

few moments later when a larger tank appears in the middle of the road. A big dark

gray tank with a cable attached to a black box or something. I hope this is the last

encounter and I will make it to school safely. I see the pickup truck with the trailer.

The driver makes a u-turn and I hope he is going back to retrieve his lost articles.

I give the morning drive a good deal of thought and decide the cat has brought

me good luck since I have managed to avoid all the obstacles dumped in my path. All

those superstitions just seem like fallacies. I think Groucho Marx had the right idea

when he said, “A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going

somewhere.”

Excerpt from The Heart of It All by L. Goff
Available from www.iUniverse.com