Bad Luck Chick...

"I want you to observe this session. I think it will give you a greater appreciation for what we do here."

Carol nodded and took out her notebook. Her supervisor dimmed the lights in the small room they were in and opened the blinds behind the two way mirror.





"I've just always had bad luck. My whole life. I've just come to expect it now."

The technician nodded and started the film.

Here she was as a little girl on the playground at school. She was hanging from the uneven bar and it collapsed. The woman nodded and pointed to her elbow where the scar was still visible. "Freak accident, the bolt hold the bar had come loose and I was the one it fell apart on. Broke my arm."

The little girl in the film jumped in age. Here she was walking down the street holding a stack of books. Her shoe caught on the edge of the sidewalk and she went sprawling. "I remember that. I lost one of the library books and had to pay a fine. It was a month's worth of allowance just to pay it off."

The film girl jumped in age again. Here she was sitting on her bed in her room. Pop idol posters on the walls. She was crying. "First boyfriend. He turned out to be a jerk. He was cheating on me with a girl from another school and when I caught him he started telling everyone that I was easy. That was a big deal back then. He was just the first in a long line of bad boyfriends."

Here she was in driving down a country road. A deer dashed in front of her car and as she slammed on the brakes to miss it the car behind her rear ended her. "I cannot tell you how many car accidents I've been in. But that one was one of the worst. Totaled the car. I was in physical therapy for a year trying to get my neck and back to feeling right. Hit and run too."

Another jump in age and she was in her mid 30s sitting at a desk in a big office.  She had a box on her desk and was filling it with her personal items. "I loved that job. I was fired that day and I still have no idea why. I ended up having to move back to my hometown to live with my mother because I lost my apartment and I hadn't saved enough money yet from my divorce. It was a brutal stretch."

Now she was in her 50s. Another car accident. This time she had been sideswiped by car that ran a red light. She watched it. "I don't remember this one. Can you back it up and let me watch again?" The film looped and she watched again. She leaned closer to the screen this time. "Oh...Oh I see."

"I've just always had bad luck. I guess that never changed."

"Would you like to see the other angles?"

She shook her head, puzzled, "What other angles?"

The tape started again. There was a maintenance crew on a playground working on a jungle gym. "Make sure you get all of the bolts a second look. There was a little girl at Whittier Elementary that broke her arm last week due to a loose bolt."

"Most of these are loose." 

"Okay get them fixed. Let me go call this in."

The film paused. "Because they checked they found that someone had been loosening the bolts on playground equipment all over town. They caught the person and there were no more accidents. You can imagine what it would have meant to fall from here," the technician tapped the picture on the screen of the top of the jungle gym, "when you broke your arm falling from just a few feet."

The film jumped again. This time there was a little boy picking up a book from the street. He looked around then tucked it in to his backpack. The film jumped again to show this young man speaking to a crowded hall, "I don't know where that book came from, but it was like a gift from God. It opened a whole new world to me. One that wasn't limited by poverty. By circumstance. It said to me, you can be anything. Do anything. That book led to many many more and now to this," he stepped back and gestured to the screen behind him showing his charity providing books to homeless children. "It might not seem important, but a window to a world outside of where you are shows you where you can go."

The film jumped again. A high school bathroom with three teenage girls, "I broke up with him when I heard what he said about his last girlfriend. It would have been me in that car if I hadn't..." Her friends nodded and patted her shoulder. "It was a bad accident. They said that if someone had been in the passenger seat they wouldn't have made it."

Another jump. This time an older man looking at the wreckage of a car. She could hear his thoughts. "I can't keep drinking. I could have killed her." 

Another jump to an office, "We let her go. She was asking about Steven's account and..." another jump to raid on that office. Bank fraud. Another jump to her mother's house. Here was her mother and again she could hear her thoughts, "Thank you for sending her home to me. I just wanted a little more time to make it right."

The technician stopped the film, "There are many more I could show you."

She smiled, "No, I think I get it now."

He handed her a form, "So what is you decision? You can stay or you can go back and do it all again."

She didn't hesitate. She signed the form titled Frewyl Inc. Bad Luck Form 219

The technician walked her out of the room.

The lights were raised in the training cubicle and Carol blinked a few times adjusting. "You wanted me to see her choose to go back?"

"Yes. It's important to understand that it's always a choice. Up here. Down there they forget. But up here it's always a choice."

"And how did you know she would choose to go back and do all of that again?"

"Because she always does."