Dicen por ahí que cada quien forja su propio destino y que la vida se construye con base en las descisiones que cada persona toma. Estoy de acuerdo, siempre he pensado que las elecciones que hacemos cambian la ruta de nuestras vidas, nos permiten guiar este gran barco y darle rumbo. Sin embargo, también hay que reconocer que el oleaje hace su parte y a veces nos lleva a lugares inesperados, nos saca de la ruta o nos sorprende llevándonos a tierra fácilmente. La suerte tiene un papel crucial en lo que nos ocurre, en los resultados de nuestras elecciones.
Today, I made the choice to go to a movie theater and watch Babel. Luck took care of the rest. Luck made me (and some friends) get late enough (after a 45 min bus ride), so that tickets for the next 2 screenings were sold out. Luck didn't wanted me to watch Babel. Lucky was that they had Flags of Our Fathers showing 15 min later. Lucky they still had tickets. The theater, I had herd, was one of the best in LA; and lucky for us our movie was at the main room, the Arclight Dome. Amazing is the only way to describe an espheric room, in blue and golden, with a huge (HUGE!) rectangular screen that had a bit of a curvature to surround the audience.
Lucky we had the best seats of the house, and even luckier was that my seat was right in front of the seat of the black guy from the TV series Scrubs (I guess being in LA helps the cinematic luck and the celebrity encounters).
So that was luck today. Of course it ended with a treat, being Halloween and all. Unlucky was that we got in the wrong bus, had to take another one and still walk for forty minutes. That's life!
As promised, here is another story, a light and funnier story, which is based on a true event but as every adaptation is not real at all!! Just a bit!!! In case you wondered, it is also about luck. Hope you like it...

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A vase of luck

Life is very much a game of luck. Some days everything just works the right way; life seems easy and fun. It is in those days that a weird feeling of happiness and overconfidence takes over hopeful individuals and a sense of power makes everything and anything seem accomplishable. Those days are great, we have all had them every once in a while.
More often, you can encounter sad individuals with a gray cloud of rain following them as they walk facing the ground, jumping at every single sound, falling on their face as they carry a big box, and stepping into all the wrong places. You actually avoid them from the distance hoping that their bad luck will remain their own. Being them is uncomfortable, because in those days in which you have to face reality and even bad luck at every single place you visit you also face embarrassment.
It is difficult to determine whether it is destiny or just personal mood the cause for these two extremes on a determined individual, to shape the path of a certain day. Life is like that, one might say those changes are what keep life exciting and scary.
Scary is how I would describe teenage years. Life in junior high is not the high point for most of the people, one might say that the gray cloud is just part of the daily outfit of teenagers. Nevertheless, my life was moderately uneventful either way. Being a shy, intelligent kid kept me out of trouble and also limited my outbreaks for social success.
It was unexpected, yet at a certain point during my first year I encountered one of the good days. It had begun with being assigned to work with a beautiful girl who had the best smile I had ever seen. It is obvious to say that I had had a crush on her for a long time. So happiness took over me, it was a chance to change my uneventful life.
We agreed to get together that afternoon to begin with the project. She suggested her house, I agreed immediately, she said at five, I said yes, she told me to bring the materials, I said sure, she could have told me to make it by myself and I would have obviously agreed. The rest of the day went well, classes seemed more bearable, my mother cooked my favorite dish for lunch and I even found a my favorite CD which I had thought to be lost.
I got there at five and we went inside. She told me to settle on the living room and that she would be right back. The house was impressive, it was stylishly decorated with modern furniture, abstract paintings on the wall, a large window that had a view to the long backyard and the pool, and couple of tall, tasteful pottery vases on the floor just beside the spiral staircase where she had disappeared just moments before. I was amazed, it was just getting better for my materialistic self: she was beautiful and rich.
When se came back we began to overview our project and the initial small talk began. Family questions, compliments on her house, what does she like to do on her free time, and so on. She was a great girl, funny, intelligent, and a good converser. Confident as I was, happy for everything turning out the right way and hopeful as the initial awkwardness had just faded, I actually began to enjoy myself in her company.
I got into telling this story about a trip and I got up from the steps were we had sat to make the assignment to reenact some stupid moment of my story, when I suddenly hit something with my back. Her laughing stopped. I turned back and saw one of the large vases swinging down, I quickly reacted and pulled it towards me before it fell, it did not. The second vase, however, had been hit by the first and the moment I secured the former it crashed into pieces all over the living room floor. Silence fell.
My mind started racing with thoughts, should I just turn around and say I am sorry? Should I start picking up the pieces? How expensive was that thing? Would I have to pay? Her mother is upstairs! Should I laugh and break the silence? No, that would be stupid. Can I make a joke? What if the thing was art? Ok, one thing is for sure, the awkwardness is back.
I began to pick up the pieces; she went upstairs as her mother asked what had happened from her room. Yes, the day had changed, the good luck had faded and the gray cloud had settled in. I thought I should probably leave before it made me break anything else. I told her I was sorry, she said I should not worry, with a tone that implied the opposite and we agreed that each one would finish a part of the work. I did not work with her again. Her smile was not for me since that day on.