NEW BERLIN [ JG ] This is a true story that I’ve sat on for a year.  But first, this gratuitously insulting-to-lefties cartoon:

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We now return to my aforementioned anecdote.

On Halloween of 2007 I opened my apartment door and found two costumed kids, roughly 11 or 12 years old, begging for candy.  As I was dropping undersized/overpriced Snickers bars in their pillowcases, one of them saw my 52″ HDTV and gasped “Awwww!  Nice TV.  You’re lucky…”

I’m not normally given to impromptu speeches, but I saw an opportunity here to make an impression on a pair of young, impressionable minds.

“Luck doesn’t have anything to do with it, son”, I explained patiently.  “About fifteen years ago, I didn’t have a penny to my name.  But I stopped goofing off and wasting my life, buckled down and worked hard, and now I’m at the point where I can afford to save up and get myself a nice TV like that.

“Don’t let yourself grow up thinking that only ‘lucky’ people can have nice things.  If you work hard, apply yourself, and save, there’s no reason you can’t get yourself a nice TV, car, home… whatever you want.”

The lad looked at me blankly, then over to his friend, then back to me and incredulously declared:

“Naw, you’re just lucky.”

That kid has haunted me for a year.  He’s likely in middle school now, having his class envy reinforced and his initiative further eroded.  In retrospect, that may have been my scariest Halloween ever.

Well, until THIS one anyway…

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