Jaded

The usual afternoon exhaustion crept over me at about 2:00. I could feel the weight of my eyelids as the sounds of the TV on my desk began to merge with the workplace white noise behind. Time to stand up and walk around or I'd soon be waltzing with Albert Einstein at my high school prom.

After fishing around in my purse for a couple of bucks, I hiked to the vending machines upstairs. There was a rush of delight as I spotted the 3 Musketeers, quickly tempered with an expectation that the machine would likely take my money and give me no candy. Or the wrapper would get caught on the dispenser and the candy would not fall. Gotta risk it. I put in my dollar after carefully flattening all four corners and entered "131" for the 3 Musketeers. The lever began to turn....and hung up!! Damn it!....Wait....it started turning again...my candy bar fell....then it kept turning! A second candy bar fell! WTF?? Did I just get two candy bars for the price of one? I looked around with a sort of half-smile on my face, completely shocked that fortune actually smiled on me. Cool.

I then turned to the soda machine, and once again, carefully flattened my dollar before inserting it. I heard the Diet Dr. Pepper make it's way down and land with a rather loud thunk. I tried to retrieve it but the bottle was in there at an odd angle. As I fiddled with it, I realized that there were two drinks in there! Again?!

I don't understand. This doesn't happen to me. The way the world works is that BAD things happen to me, not fortuitous twists of fate. Never does anything come to me from the universe without my having to work my ass off to get it. Not even very small things. If a strange, random event occurs in my life, it usually is to my detriment. Very often to the specific detriment of my financial stability. But, out of nowhere, I actually got something for nothing.

I pondered this while walking back to my desk. Then a very sad thought came to me...what a shame that I am shat upon so often that something as simple as a vending machine malfunction in my favor made me feel like a lottery winner. What a shame that I have come to expect misfortune to befall me. I'm an optimist, really. I've weathered some overwhelming pain, sadness, fear, loneliness, frustration, helplessness....and survived with a smile on my face, for the most part.

Even a puppy with the sweetest nature will become hand shy after being hit enough times.

Well, however small, fortune DID smile on me, so I'll take it. The next time my toilet spontaneously overflows, or my car jerks, or my cat gets sick, or the Town of Wendell threatens to charge me $200 for my grass being 1 inch too tall, I'll think fondly back on this day. The day the vending machines at work cut me a break when I've had so much difficulty catching one anywhere else.