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Probability. In order to assign a numerical value that accurately describes the likelihood of a given event under a given set of circumstances and at a given point in space/ time you must first be able to describe each possible occurrence that could lead to, or help lead to, that event. This is very difficult in even the most tightly controlled and painstakingly orchestrated laboratory experiments. It is virtually impossible to do, accurately, in random real life situations. So I wont even try to calculate the odds for the unexpectedness that overtook my life this afternoon.
It happened just this way: I left my home this afternoon, left my children and beautiful devoted wife, at around 2:30 pm this afternoon. I was going to run an errand. Pay a bill, that sort of thing, you understand. My Saturn SL2 Coup, even after 12 years of devoted service, was more than up to the challenge. She roared into life upon ignition and then purred like a kitten as I left my wonderfully straight driveway and proceeded north via the side streets of my quiet working class neighborhood past bricks, stucco, vinyl and aluminum facades to my anticipated appointment and an unexpected appointment with curious fate.
Today was a fine warm day. Sol, unfettered by the tiresome clouds that had, up until this very week plagued him incessantly, now bathed the whole world in his golden web of ether illuminating every corner and niche. I asked myself "Who could miss even the smallest of details on such an uncannily luminous day?" "Nobody, of course!" I replied to myself. I was wrong in this evaluation of my fellow mans attention to minutiae but not in my own as later events would reveal.
The suburban grid. The Detroit Metropolitan area is arranged in as orderly a fashion as could have been contrived at the time of its spawning. An ugly sprawl exists, to be sure, but it is as orderly a sprawl as our city fathers could devise. Arranged in lines as long and as straight as Mother Earth's flaws and imperfections would allow one could gaze either north or south up or down my street and see an obscured horizon two or even three suburban towns or municipalities beyond the one in which you were standing. The second town from my own was my goal this afternoon but my course was not to be so straight a line as to follow Gertrude (my own street) I was inconveniently obliged to make a number of westward turns all the while maintaining a northward track.
By and by I reached a little commercial oasis in this residential sea. An intersection dominated not by lot after lot of post war tract housing but by some ten or fifteen businesses. Establishments ranging from a 7-11 to two competing pizza parlors, A resale shop, a liquor store, a pet groomers, dentist and a tanning salon and it was in this plaza that lady luck was to spin her treacherous web.
At the far north end of this short corridor was a traffic light. Straddling the traffic light at the east and west sides of the southern face of the intersection were a liquor store and a tanning salon. When, obliged, as you may be when traveling through my city, you stop at this particular traffic light you shall be stopped betwixt Paul's Liquor store to the west and Tiki Tan to the east. It was amidst the transepts of this uncouth church where fate and my base avarice did meet and my good fortune was attained.
As I proceeded toward the intersection I noticed a flutter, as of a wounded bird, on the ground upon the very gray matte of concrete upon which I and my fellow motorists now motored. The green blur I saw upon the street was not that of some sad wounded parrot though. I immediately, even from the low slung yet spacious cockpit of my fabulous Saturn SL2 Coup, recognized it. I understood, then and there, that I was looking upon, or had looked upon (as I was still moving towards the intersection!) what could only have been the random spastic fluttering of genuine paper money animated by a slight easterly breeze. Filthy lucre. The coin of the realm, the almighty dollar. Call it what you will I instantly knew that this was none other than God himself beating on the dent resistant composite door of my lavender Saturn alerting me to an opportunity and if i didn't turn my stereo down and roll down the fucking window I could end up dying poorer than Moe Howard.
Boy this is just going on and on isn't it? So long story long I pulled over, parked in front of the Tiki Tan, got out of my low slung Saturn Coup and found, much to my surprise, a twenty dollar bill. Nothing this cool has happened to me in years. I'm very excited.
Thank you,
Lee Roy.
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