Lucky Is as Lucky Does

I am frequently asked how I came to be nick-named “Lucky.”

It all began on the fashionable Lower East Side, when my Mom, an original `caretaker’, a nurse, met my father, a service-man {Coast Guard, not Maytag.}

During said first meeting between those two lovers, my Mom assumed that Dad had, in adolescence, suffered a brain stem stroke which had deprived him of the faculty of speech, when in truth he was merely the original non-verbal male. This clinical oversight on her part was never fully explained to me despite her being a nurse and all. I guess we all find what we are looking for, even if we have to invent it.

Well, they started dating.  She taught him some basic signing so he could pass species’ muster in society; introduced him to utensils, taught him to read and helped him practice apposing his thumbs – this bit of history being supplied by Mom in later years. Dad just shrugged when I asked him if all this was true.

The loving couple frequented Dad’s favorite dating venue; his favorite not because he loved the music of the time, but because while the band played loudly, he didn’t have to talk. The trouble came when the band when on break.

They were at a night-club when she popped the question.  “Jack, don’t you think you’d be better off with me than without me in the future?”  Dad grunted; Mom presumed consent and they became engaged on the spot.  Mom said that Dad then became quiet although how she could distinguish this from his customary silence is still something of a mystery to me.

During this spell of quietude in the night-club, Dad nervously fumbled with napkins and straws and made a stick-figure.  He held it up and with a diffident attempt at humor mumbled his first sentence ever, “This is our first son, Lucky Lucifer.”

Mom finished her drink, fell out of her chair and started speaking in tongues to the ceiling fan while the band came back and played “Moon River.”

Now, she was raised better than that and even today excuses her behavior that evening by reporting that when Dad said this to her [not merely the part about `our first son’, but the fact that he had finally said anything] she took it as cosmic confirmation that she was to marry this man.

Epiphanies can be nerve-wrackin’, so I guess what she did made sense.

And so, to finally pin the tail on this tale, Himself and Herself hurriedly sought out a Justice of the Peace and `done the deed.’  Mom was in a hurry lest Dad have second thoughts, although with him being mute for the most part, I don’t know how she figured to know he had changed his mind.  I guess, although he never did say, Dad was in a hurry because 1] he didn’t have anything else to do that evening and 2] what with the war on [WW2] he could be called to active duty any minute. As it turns out he played a key role in the Seige of Yonkers, a little publicized but critical victory in the over-all war effort, so Mom said….

During that conflict, he was hit in the head by a mortar round.  The impact did considerable damage to the shell but Dad also sustained a wound which necessitated two stitches and a steel plate in his head.  For a long while he got along OK.

But with the advent of newer kitchen appliances, there arose a problem:  whenever Mom would turn on the microwave, Dad would forget who he was and wet himself.  He never said anything about it but Mom said this bothered him and I think she was right. I wouldn’t presume to speak for him, but I suspect it made even Dad, not a man easily unsettled, feel a bit awkward.

Well, they had the plate exchanged for one made of space-age plastic, which, if you ignore the fact that he sometimes went into orbit, worked very well.

So, they got married and although the marriage was less like a balmy day in the tropics and more like an uneasy cease-fire in Beirut, they lasted 25 years.  Something of a feat in this day and time.

And I got a nick-name; all because Mom thought Dad had suffered a stroke in his formative years.  It’s the little things make the biggest difference, I tell ya.

Publishers Note: The word “luck” entered English from either German or Dutch in the 15th century as, not surprisingly, a gambling term, meaning good (or bad) fortune. “Lucifer” did indeed mean “light-bearing” in its original Latin (“lux,” light, plus “fer,” bearing), and originally referred to the planet Venus, known as the morning star when it appears at sunrise. The connection between Lucifer the morning star and Satan goes back to the Biblical passage of Isaiah 14:12 (“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?”), which, although it was addressed to the king of Babylon, was later interpreted by religious scholars to be actually referring to Satan, the “fallen angel.” So perhaps our dear Lucky Garvin in the best and proper interpretation was very appropriately named: Fortunate giver of light.