Take the money and run

If a friend were to tell you about being involved in an improbable incident, it is tricky to respond in a socially acceptable manner. Obviously, you should not say “K” to someone’s face who just spent five minutes breathlessly throwing words like “unbelieeevable” at you. You have to go “Whaaaat? No waaaay!” but with precisely the right number of a’s – too few of them will make you sound like a cynical jerk. Too many of them and you’ll sound like a sarcastic ass – neither of which is cool anymore because “House” ended a year ago. 

Actually, the conversation is trickier for the teller of the unlikely anecdote because it might come across as a fib fabricated with no finesse and an insult to the listener’s intelligence. If I told you about how I was once walking in my hometown and almost got buried alive under a pile of raining chairs that came loose from the roof of a passing bus, I'm worried that you might do this after I go away:

Now, I was fortunate to escape unhurt from the raining chairs incident and I'm not suggesting that my friends would be bitter about my good fortune. That's just how I deal with good fortune - with paranoia. I am incapable of just going "Wow lucky me" and moving on. If I was in the movie "No Country for Old Men" and stumbled across $2 million in the Texas desert surrounded by dead drug dealers, I would have walked away without touching a dollar. And then I would have skipped town anyway and moved to some place far away. 

I mistrust any unexpected act of generosity from the Universe because I attribute it to a clerical error by the Cosmos and I expect I'm going to have to pay some sort of penalty for it. Like getting someone else's copy of Victoria's Secret Summer 2013 catalog delivered to my doorstep, which would brighten my day, but then being told to pay for the return shipping. 

My paranoid theory about good luck coming with a proportional penalty is supported by the remarkable true story of a gentleman called Tsutomu Yamaguchi. Here he is:

A 29-year-old engineer with the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Yamaguchi-san was visiting Hiroshima on the morning of Aug 6, 1945 when the American nuclear bomb exploded 3 km away from him. The 15 kiloton blast left the city shattered and smoldering in the toxic shadow of a mushroom cloud, killing 70,000 people in minutes. 

Yamaguchi himself nearly died of severe burns on his upper body. After literally surviving the absolute worst Monday morning ever, he made his way across an unspeakably horrific hellscape and caught a train to his hometown. 
And then, barely 72 hours after the Americans vaporized half of his skin with E=mc², Yamaguchi actually reported to his hometown office and told his boss about the unholy fireball that annihilated Hiroshima. To which his boss responded by refusing to believe any of it. Imagine Yamaguchi's heavily bandaged face when the boss man said “You’re an engineer. Calculate it. How can (just) one bomb destroy an entire city?”

However, the price Yamaguchi paid for cheating death in Hiroshima was not taking crap from his boss. That was just the down payment - his hometown was Nagasaki. So imagine his face again when moments later, he saw a blinding flash of light as the second nuclear weapon detonated 3 km away, instantly killing 40,000 people. He almost died all over again, but he got better and lived to be 93. Tsutomu Yamaguchi remains the only officially recognized survivor of, count them, two nuclear attacks.  

The reason I bring all this up? Something unbelieeevable happened to me recently and I wish to share it with you. I went on Amazon and ordered a new hardcover copy of a non-fiction book for $19.95. What was delivered to me, however, was a used book. Even though it looks brand new, I can tell it was previously purchased at least twelve years ago, by somebody called Carol. Just by looking at the book. I. Can. Tell.

Er, I can deduce all this because the first page of the book contains a message "To Carol, with best wishes" from the author who died twelve years ago. Have a look:

That signature belongs to Douglas Adams, whose Hitchhiker's Guide and Dirk Gently novels are among my all-time favorite works of fiction - to put it mildly. And somehow, I've been presented with a book that has been personally written in by the madman himself.

So, what terrible price I will have to pay for this most fortuitous clerical error? I first thought I might be accused of lying about it. Or accused of amputating the foot of a rabbit whose mother was Mike Phelps. But this is much bigger than any of that. To me, this is the equivalent of stumbling upon $200 million in the desert. And I'm going to take the money and run. I'll take my chances against the unhinged assassin with a catastrophically bad haircut that will inevitably come after it. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to skip town and move to some place far, far away. I will dearly miss all the good folks of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. If any of you are reading this, good bye. 

P.S. If this guy shows up asking questions, tell him I moved to Melbourne, Florida. And then, run away and call the cops.