Sometimes, I really take the cake!

Or “Why I’m Not Triskaidekaphobic!”

It’s my birthday today, Friday the 13^th, my lucky day. I’ve always felt different, out of sync with the world, not a fit. I’ve always been a square peg looking at a bank of round holes. But I’ve always felt lucky.

Tuesdays child is full of grace

At one time I would tell people I had actually been born on a Friday 13^th, no one ever looked it up, they’d all just say “Really? Wow!” It fit. I was, and am, an unusual entity and it just figured that I might have been born on such a day.

In reality, I had been born on a Tuesday. If there is any grace in me it is well hidden. It may come out in some of the photographs I take, but I’m fairly sure it isn’t very evident at other times.

The luck of the draw

When it comes to being lucky, I’m holding a mitt full of aces. No, I’m not a great poker player, but my life has been rife with lucky breaks. I’m not rich, not famous, not even infamous, but I’m still alive, still reasonably healthy and in possession of riches in my life that I can only have amassed by the sheerest of lucky incidence.

My childhood was one of loose routine and firm structure.

Both my mother and my grandmother had a very good idea of my needs, my mother from experience and my grandma from her years as a very good school teacher. My learning at home was geared to my ADHD, ways were found to make things exciting and interesting. Lucky me.

I suffered emotionally from having to attend school, but had the benefit of several understanding teachers who were like landfalls on a stormy journey. They had the sense to challenge and engage me. Again I often thrived in spite of my ADHD. Lucky me.

My childhood, from the age of five on, occurred in a rural setting. I was allowed to grow up free range, so to speak. I had chores to do on the farm I was raised on, but was left to my own devices to entertain myself. This meant that I had animals to feed and care for, but I had those same animals to entertain me. My horse, my dog, these were companions whose friendship wouldn’t waver when my ADHD made me too odd for human company. Lucky me.

Community activities were usually centered around sports. Baseball, skating, hockey, soccer, hiking; these were the things that caused the neighbourhood to congregate. And these were the things in which I could excel, if not in skill, at least in consistent participation. My ADHD hyperactivity was a bonus. Lucky me.

Structured activities like the Christmas Concerts were events that called on my dramatic nature to surface. I was in heaven when asked to perform in skits and plays and was always ready to join others in some choral effort or even to be shoved out on stage alone to entertain the village masses by myself. Lucky me.

Recent events would seem to suggest that my luck has met with an untimely end. And yet, I’m looking around me and once again I’m finding my luck holding out. My friends have rallied around me and my family has reassured me that I am not lost to them. My writing isn’t moving forward as quickly as I would like it to, but just when I needed something to strive for, along comes a job at Psych Central to provide me with a purpose. Lucky me.

And today, I’m turning 53, an age I never thought I’d live to see when I was a teenager. I’m young at heart, I have purpose and support and I’m slowly assembling a structure in which to live my life. I’m able to laugh again, I’m able to look forward and make plans, I’m able to see a time in the future when things might well be more than okay, things might actually be damned good.

Lucky, lucky me!

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    Last reviewed: 13 Jan 2012