Explicitness Essential

I no longer question Destiny nor direct requests to it.  I don't mean I've stopped talking to Fate altogether; that'd be childish, and besides, Fate doesn't deserve that sort of treatment from me.  Many a time it's gone out of its way to give me exactly what I've asked for.

Take the year I was sixteen, for example.  I didn't have a date for New Year's.  With that flair I have for forecasting the future, I knew that if I sat home alone, I'd brood.  I'd spend my evening in morose musings about the shortsightedness of boys who didn't appreciate my datable qualities.  Somehow it seemed the wrong way to welcome a future.

So when the phone rang on December 28, I breathed a quick prayer.  "Please," I whispered, "let it be for me and about New Year's."  And it was.  My aunt wanted me to babysit for her.  I didn't have to stay home after all.

Or consider that year, even, when I desperately wanted a chance to just loaf around in bed and do nothing.  I opened my mouth about it, and Fate graciously stuck its foot in.  I was put on complete bed rest‑-in a hospital, for five weeks.

Then there was the time I didn't feel like going in to work.  I knew better, but I put in my request anyway.  I was very concrete about it too: I specified that I didn't want to be sick; I mentioned that I didn't want to have lost my job or have a death in the family.  Having nailed down every opening I could think of, I went to sleep secure in the knowledge that this time Fate would have to let me down.

But not me.  Not Destiny's tot.  It snowed like the dickens, and I spent most of the following afternoon digging my driveway out from six-foot drifts.  The rest of the time I just nursed my frostbite.

So now I restrict my conversations with Fate to small talk.  I try not to complain‑-at least about anything in particular.  And I'm very careful to refrain from asking for things.  Partly I don't want to feel obligated.  After all, what can I do for Fate?  And partly I don't want to get spoiled by all this easy compliance with my demands.  But mostly it's because I haven't the knack for being specific.  And with my kind of luck, explicitness is essential.