lucky day

lucky day

fiction
edward w pritchard

Two things happened on the bus ride down to the office for the babysitting job the other day between me and the white guy bus driver that were significant in an insignificant type of way for a Monday morning. Of course since most everyday a different bus driver is assigned to drive my bus route  lucky number 19 downtown I won't be able to tell my bus driver about the unusual co-incidence concerning lucky number 19 I bet at the casino yesterday, Sunday, when I enjoyed a fine nearly free buffet with my son.

The buffet after we got up to the casino up North of town in my son's car that I helped fix recently with the miracle of dry gas from the auto zone, that worked quite well by the way, wasn't exactly free but it was very good and cost for the two of us only six dollars after the free $25. credit I got in the daily card swipe when you walk into the casino. Most of the six dollars was for tips for the waitress who brought us our ice teas as I like to share my good fortune with working folks, and she did a good job of bringing us ice teas even though we had another drink, our two dollar beers from the secret special bar there at the casino room that I am allowed to enter because I am " gold" member  because of regular attendance. I also got a card for a lucky thousand dollar drawing which I dropped into a drum already holding about 10,000 other potential winners.

Anyway that white bus driver on the previous Monday when I walked the 1200 steps on the garmin from where I stay to the awning covered stop that rainy morning was doing his route book notes when I entered the bus and since I didn't have my usual 50 cents, two quarters for the the senior citizen discount rate I gave him a buck, into the auto-matic ticket counter and I remarked making conversation, that the 50 cent ticket credit card I got back as change was just like winning at the casino, [I was implying -another time] and then I asked him, who he was kind of cold and straight, for a bus driver, if he frequented the casino, as I was the only person on the bus, it being the first stop, there at the low income grocery store, on the white side of town, and he replied emphatically- absolutely not, meaning and further saying "  I don't waste my hard earned money".

Well a few miles later over in the black side of town on the same 19 route last Monday, a thirty something black guy gets on the bus, with a kind of pushy type black girl friend, and her beautiful and very special maybe 11 year old daughter and for some reason the white bus driver will  let the man and woman on the bus for free as it is customary to let homeless type people on for free but not the young girl as she is wearing a back pack and is obviously a student and therefore she can't ride for free although by custom free service on the bus is typical in this type of situation. Well the guy is ready to get off, and not take their trip this early Monday morning with his family but the woman makes a bit of a ruckus and eventually the little girl is allowed to ride for free, the woman sits behind me and complains about the bus driver the entire ride, none of us five other passengers had to get up and give the bus driver the 1.50 student fare for the little girl, and she the special young girl with a back pack, she  got to school last Monday, and hopefully forgot that incident and I got off that guys bus at the terminal and walked the rest of the way [ 1100 step] steps on the garmin to babysit and forgot about that little girl with the backpack until, about a week later, yesterday Sunday at the casino.

I was thinking yesterday Sunday at the casino about choosing my lucky bus number 19 when I choose my six numbers for keno, when I started to play with the twenty bucks I had earmarked for gambling, after my son and I finished our six dollar buffet when Lucky day- happy day, over the loud speaker Ed P - last three numbers of my gold member card 922 had won a thousand dollars in free play! Which since free play is not a thousand dollars in real money I had to work real hard there at the casino over the next five hours to run one thousand dollars of free play through the machines until I left happy, happy, happy with six hundred actual US dollars.

For some reason on the way out of the casino with an extra $600 dollars in my pocket I was thinking about the white bus driver implying to me what a chump I was, that's how I took his comment that, absolutely not, "he wouldn't gamble at the casino", I probably thought of the bus driver because of me thinking about the number 19 bus earlier when I just won the drawing, a ten thousand to one shot, having my entry card picked out of the spinning barrel.

I have to get up in a few hours today, this Monday morning to catch the nineteen bus and for sure, odds are, I won't have that same white guy bus driver but if I do I am going to tell him about my $600 dollar happy, happy Sunday yesterday and give him a five [$] bill to let someone ride for free who is in need.

I hope that little girl didn't feel bad about almost getting asked to leave a public bus last Monday. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to give her a few bucks if I see her again, and certainly her Mother doesn't like older white folks anyway, but I bet if her Mother's boyfriend heard the story of the winning ticket I got at the casino he would give me a smile for my luck. I bet he, that little girl with the backpack's Mother's friend,  could empathize with what it is like to be me, an older White guy and routinely take a bus to work early on an ordinary insignificant Monday morning and have the good fortune of having an extra $600 to start your week.