On Winning the Lottery

There are certain stories that a friend tells you to which you reply "wow, with luck like that, you should play the lottery". Before you go spending your next paycheck on QuickPick tickets, consider this: how much luck/karma do you think you have left?

Here's the tale... my friend was driving home from work in his recently purchased vehicle. Like me, this is the first non-ghetto vehicle he has owned. I mean, I'm a serious fan of cheap, durable cars in which you never have to double-think merging aggressively with, but the game of "will it start today" can get old. My friend has me beat... he actually purchased a new-from-the-lot car (vs my newest-used-I-ever-owned). He got a great deal on it, and he has less perchance than me for hitting deer and reflectors. The point being, he is very protective of his car.

Back to that fateful evening... it is dusk out (alright, I don't know for sure if it was dusk, but who's telling the story?)... inky night was grasping at the woods. Nothing stood out in the headlights but the hungry eyes of pack animals. Ahead of him at a distance was a lumbering dump truck. As he was lost in reverie about hydrogen microturbines as a solution to global energy demands, a golfball sized rock, presumably from the dump truck's load, smashed into the middle of his windshield with a terrific "crack".

His sympathetic nervous system dilated subjective time. After what seemed like minutes (but mere seconds in reality) he realized three things 1) he was alive 2) he was glad he had stain resistant seats 3) the windshield was intact. But how could this be? The rock had enough kinetic energy to drive a nail into an oak...

On inspection, it turns out that the rock had miraculously hit the windshield wiper... snapping the metal backing like a dry twig. This exact placement and only this placement meant the rock left no damage to the windshield or the paint of the body. Ready for the amazing part? The wipers were on at the time. The rock had hit dead-center on the windshield, but caught the wiper-blade mid-sweep. Only the fact that it was a bit snowy and slushy had caused him to have his wipers on.

But that's not all. It was damp, but not very damp... the wipers had been on extended intermittent. Ponder the timing for a second... two moving vehicles... different speeds... a random bounce of the rock... and a wiper that happened to choose the right instant to come on, seemingly reaching out to deflect the rock, sacrificing itself to save the greater automobile.

$13 later my friend has two new wiper blades and a tale worthy of passing on to the grandchildren. "Kids, I may never have won the lottery, but let me tell you about the time I beat the unbeatable odds."