Luck. Are we born with it? Do we make our own? Can you find it? Can you give it away? I would say I inherited being lucky. Maybe I was lucky to get the genes I inherited. My mother has a knack for finding four leaf clovers. Just walking through the yard, she could always look down and say, “here’s another one”. She would put them in little bottles in the kitchen window.

My grandmother was always finding them, too. Granny would tape them to Susan B Anthony dollars and give them away as good luck pieces. She was lucky at other things, too. For example, Granny was boss lady of the exhibit tents at the fair. The canning, the quilts, the crafts, they were all displayed in the tents Granny was in charge of. There are lots of memories there, but back to the lucky ones.

There were games at the fair. Put a quarter on a colored dot, and if the ball bounced in the hole for that color, you win a prize. Granny would take me to play the games. We always won. We won at the ‘pick up a duck’ game, too. Little plastic yellow ducks would float around in a circle, through a tunnel, and for a quarter, you would pick one up to see what prize you won by the letter on the bottom. S for small, M for medium, and L for large. When Granny paid, we always won a large.

Now that I’m older, I realize Granny put a quarter on all the colors, so we couldn’t loose. I also think the duck game as rigged, and the large prize ducks were stuck in the tunnel until the man running the game flipped a switch. My grandmother being a boss lady may have helped out with that game. Similarly, my grandmother could always get the prize I wanted from a gumball machine. I don’t know how many quarters she spent to get it, but I always thought how lucky we were to get just the one I wanted.

My sister was doing the same thing for her granddaughter one day. I wondered if my grandniece thought she was lucky too, or if she realized what my sister was doing. Then I thought, you know, she is lucky, and so was I, not everyone is lucky enough to have such a ‘”Lucky” grandmother. We were born lucky. Lucky to be born to people who make their own luck, and know how to give it away. Everytime I find a four leaf clover, I know it’s supposed to bring luck, but it just reminds me how lucky I already am.