Do you believe in magic?
Not the kind where bunnies pop out of hats, or wizards do stuff in movies. Okay, so maybe it’s not magic, but I don’t know what else to call what happened recently when I was in Las Vegas for a pool tournament.
It all started when Blair, a fellow pool player, was missing a pair of pants. No, they weren’t the ones that she had been wearing (though if they had been, you know what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!) Unexpectedly, she made it to the Final Four of our pool tournament, and a chance to compete in the finals.
However, our league takes the finals seriously. We even have a dress code – and that means no jeans allowed in the finals rooms. My teammate was thrilled, but a little panicked. Not expecting to get that far in the tournament, she hadn’t brought anything suitable to wear during her game. She’d have to find time to go out shopping for a pair of emergency pants, which, if you’ve ever had to do during a vacation, can be a real bummer (no pun intended).
I was struck with inspiration – how about my pants? I had a pair of brand new dress pants, tags on, just waiting in my hotel room. My friend was skeptical – and I understand why. Buying dress pants can be stressful for us ladies. We can’t just grab a pair of Dockers with the correct numbers on them – that’s just not how women’s pants work. Still, empowered by the luck of Las Vegas, she decided to try them on.
And they fit perfectly. Not only did Blair look amazing at her tournament, she won! Fifteen grand, people. My pants, ones I bought on clearance at a discount store, helped this woman win $15,000.00!
Perhaps we can call it that special kind of magic that Vegas runs on – luck. But I couldn’t help but think of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a popular book and movie from a few years ago, featuring a team of female friends who mail a pair of lucky jeans from one to the
other. Where the magic comes in is that the girls, who are all different shapes and sizes, each fit the jeans beautifully. That’s some Harry
Potter level magic, right ladies?
Pity that you can’t see my pants!
But there’s a quote from the movie that spoke to me: “Being happy isn’t having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it’s about stringing together all the little things.”
Like this second example of my lucky-charm status, that happened on the same trip: I was leaning on a slot machine, waiting for some friends. Being the friendly southern girl I am, I struck up a conversation with a lady playing the one-armed-bandit. She was happily tapping the screen while we chatted, when another man stopped us to ask if she realized that she’d just won $985 dollars on that machine. My new slot-machine-playing-friend grabbed her things and cashed out, but not before coming back to hand me a hundred-dollar bill. “Thanks for bringing me luck!” she said, and she walked away.
Yup. It really happened. I made a hundred bucks just by being me!
I have a never-ending string of lucky coincidences in my life that might be enough to make you think I’m some kind of a leprechaun, but here’s what I think. Whether you call it luck, magic, or something else, it is the little things – those moments of fabulous, funny synchronicity – that make me so happy.
I hope you have a happy Monday, too,
~Mary
