Right Time, Right Place

 

fortuitous - adjective - happening by chance rather than design (Google).

Since I started composing this blog roughly a year ago, I have featured 244 words. It is conceivable that today's came up a while back already, but after a night of little sleep, I frankly don't have the motivation to go through all of them for the sake of originality. If you have been an avid reader and recall that I already used this adjective, I beg your pardon and request patience. After all, vocabulary words are meant to be seen and heard and used more than once.

Honestly, I'm not big on the idea of chance. I tend to believe that all things happen by design, for a reason. Every once in awhile, though, the concept of luck fits because of the randomness of the occurrence involved and the resulting situational irony. For the most part, I am an unlucky person, but every once in a blue moon, happenstance happens, and I and maybe one other person are in the beneficial center of it. When this sort of thing occurs, pure magic is the byproduct.

There are two cases in point; both involve rock concerts that took place less than 48 hours apart. Last Saturday night, the eldest member in good standing of Platonic Anonymous invited me to a Smithereens' concert at a venue that was unfamiliar. The reason why we had never heard of it previously was because it had literally just opened its doors. Uninformed, ergo, unaware, we arrived and were directed into a premiere gala celebration, complete with searchlights a la 20th Century Fox's logo, plush red carpets rolled out in just the right spots, complimentary Prosecco, Budweiser, and Californian wines, as well as an appetizing assortment of appetizers and somewhat appetizing fellow guests, meaning they were dressed relatively well considering the featured new wave musicians. Fortuitous? I'd say so, particularly for Jersey.

The second situation was even more so. Last night, Monday, my daughter treated me to a Genesis concert at Madison Square Garden, the tickets to which she had purchased for a high price back in July. Despite the extraordinary amount of money she spent, we still wound up in the nosebleeds, several levels above and back from the stage. Naturally, she was disappointed. A few minutes after we situated ourselves and came to terms with our unlucky locale, the good fairy of fortuitousness appeared in the guise of an usher. He was not waving a wand, but a wad of tickets. When I turned all away around to face him, revealing only my eyes since I was wearing a mask, he asked how many we required, I replied, "Two" and just like that, I was cradling in my hand two tickets to two seats just slightly above stage left on the first level of the arena, tickets worth double the price that my daughter had paid. We were upgraded at no cost at all, for no reason at all other than that we just happened to be in the right place, at the right time. Wow!

Although I'm quite sure I have cited this quote before, it's appropriate here as well. Tom Petty, a rocker from the same era as Genesis and the Smithereens, once wrote, "Even the losers get lucky sometimes." In a world of balance, Karma, it just makes sense. 

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