Odds-on Bet

You have it all backwards.  I'm not challenging Fate, no, no, no!  It's Fate that's challenging me.  Whatever its reasons, it's freed me entirely from the laws of chance.  Those mathematically predictable principles that govern the rest of the universe take one look at me and dive headlong for the nearest time warp. 

That, however, isn't my problem.  My problem is no one believes me when I tell them this.  Except for two friends, that is.  But then, they were witnesses.

My first convert was Ruth.  Until that day she believed most firmly in the Unconscious and Its Powers.  Did you have a stomach ache?  It was not the three pieces of pizza before and the hot fudge sundae after the movie that caused the abdominal agony.  It was Inner Turmoil.  Headache?  Hidden Conflict.  Late for appointments?  Hostility.  Early?  Anxiety.  I was usually punctual so my diagnosis was Compulsive.  This made a refreshing change from "impulsive," which is how my other friends described me.

Ruth took one look at the purple bruise on my temple that afternoon and knew the explanation immediately.  I had been Punishing Myself.  All she wanted to know were the details.  I explained about my abandonment by the laws of chance.  In the last twenty-four hours I'd lost my change purse, broken up with a boyfriend, and walked straight into a wall that had lived peacefully with me for thirteen years.  I assured her my troubles came as neither single spies nor battalions, but in vast migrating hordes, much like the army of Ghengis Khan.  There would be no point in going downtown for the blouse on which I'd left a deposit: the blouse wouldn't be there.  Ghengis Khan's main force was yet to come; years of experience with Chance told me more mishaps lay in store.

"Nonsense," Ruth said firmly.  She was an English major, as was I, but where she'd mastered the imperative mood, I was unable to get past the subjunctive.  "If it were just bad luck, it would be over with three items."  (Ruth, like Freud, was impressed with the number three.)  "It certainly wouldn't go on and on.  But it's not bad luck anyway.  Everything that's happened you've done to yourself.  Your Unconscious is Inflicting Punishment‑-a common reaction to guilt.  The real reason you don't want to get the blouse is that it represents a reward which you wish to deny yourself.  Let's go!"

I went, still trying to figure out what Ruth, my unconscious, or even Chance thought I was guilty of.

The blouse wasn't there.  The tag on it, the salesgirl explained, must have been pulled off by accident, and the blouse sold by another girl.  My deposit would be refunded unless there was something else I wanted.

Caught in the subjunctive as I was, I could accept all this.  Not Ruth‑-she was furious!  "That was clearly a Freudian slip on the salesgirl's part," she stormed.  "She ought to see an analyst."

"It's not her," I demurred patiently.  "It's me.  I told you."

Our train back uptown pulled in barely a few minutes after the Queens express.  One of the crowd scrambling for this had knocked me off balance, and I had tried to land on my feet.  I had come close‑-one foot and an ankle.  Ruth helped me hobble into the uptown local. 

There were, predictably, no empty seats.  All were filled with passengers well versed in ignoring those who only stand and wait.  Ruth was muttering about Alienation and glaring at the Disturbed but seated souls until she noticed me.  I was hanging onto a pole and achieving the stance, if not the grace, of a flamingo.  ""You have had a run of bad luck," she said.  "It was just one of those days when you should've stayed in bed."

"It wouldn't have made any difference if I had," I assured her.  "Then the bed would've fallen down."

"Nonsense," she replied.

"You better get that ankle elevated," she commanded when we reached my apartment.  "Lie down and get a pillow under it.  I'll get the compresses."  She scurried into the bathroom as I deposited myself on the bed.

Crash!

Ruth came charging back.  The bed, or at least the bottom half of it was resting securely on the floor, the tip of a broken slat protruding from under its side.  I was calmly placing a pillow under my ankle.  She stared at me for a long, long time.  "I can't believe it," she kept saying.

"I'm quite all right," I comforted here.  "Really."

She sighed and gave up.  "Maybe you are," she agreed, "but I'll never be the same!"

Matt was my second disciple.  He was logical, but I liked him anyway.  He liked me because I could speak his native language‑-math.  We sat next to each other in Advanced Algebra and held frequent conversation under the disapproving eye of our instructor.

Matt was appalled when he discovered my relationship (or lack of it) with Chance, possibly because I told him about it in English, a language from which most of our misunderstandings arose.  "But you can't believe that," he protested.  "You even handed in a perfect paper on the probability test.  You understand the laws of chance cover the unusual, and you're just not being logical!"  This, from Matt, was the Ultimate Reprobation.

"Where's your logic?" I retorted, jabbing viciously below the belt.  "I understand photosynthesis too, but it doesn't apply to me either."

But Matt, like most logical people, was seeking perfection, not reality.  In his eyes I was now flawed.  So when he discovered Probability House, an exhibition in a nearby fair, he was determined to return me to a state of grace and insisted I accompany him there.

The first thing we saw as we entered the exhibit was a huge paper mache revolver, its cylinder opened.  This cylinder could be spun, and if it came to rest with its one filled-in chamber at the bottom, a light would flash and a bell ring.  The one who turned it, should this happen, would then understand why a rough day at the races was a better bet than Russian roulette.

"What are your chances of making that bell ring?" Matt demanded, testing me.

"One out of one," I replied.

"One out of six, you mean," he corrected me.  "Couldn't you figure that out?"

"One out of six is everyone else's chance of making the light flash," I agreed, "but that isn't what you asked me.  You asked what my chances were, and I told you."

With a scornful look, Matt turned the cylinder.  Nothing happened as an empty chamber came to rest at the bottom.  He turned it again.  Still nothing.  Not until his seventh try did the bell and flasher come to life.  "See?" he said triumphantly.  "Now you try.  Prove it to yourself."

I spun the cylinder obediently.

"Clang," went the bell.

"Flash," went the light.

"That," went Matt, hastily, "is also covered by the laws of chance.  Try it again."

Pull, clang, flash!

"It must be stuck, somehow," complained Matt, pulling me over to a mock slot machine.  "Now here," he continued, "we can't determine the odds against our winning without a knowledge of the number of combinations involved."

"Try reading the directions," I suggested.  "They say our chances of getting three identical pictures are one out of three hundred and fifty-six."

Matt pulled the lever.  Two lemons and a cherry.  Again.  Two apples and a lemon.  Again.  An apple, a cherry, and a lemon.  "You try," he ordered.

I pulled and produced three cherries.

"You must've jammed it," Matt worried, pulling to check.  An apple, a cherry, and a joker with its tongue sticking out gazed back at him.

"My turn," I said cheerfully.  Three lemons.

Matt seized my hand before I could pull again.  "All mathematically explainable," he assured me, dragging me to a huge machine nearby.  This had a smooth cloth covered by a bubble of glass.  On the cloth rested ten disks.  He pushed a button and the disks flew into the air, landing with eight white sides and two black sides up.  "Now, Miss Logically Improbable, let's see you beat that!"

I pushed.  The disks, when they landed, did not beat him.  They reversed him instead.  On the cloth lay eight black disks and two white.

Matt stormed angrily for the exit, passing the revolver as he went.  I followed, giving it one last pull.  "Clang, flash," said Probability House to me in farewell.  Matt didn't even turn his head.  He knew whose hand was at work.

"There has to be an explanation," he said, once I joined him outside.  "A perfectly logical, rational, mathematical explanation."

"There's an explanation, all right," I agreed.  "But it's not logical‑-only so."

He thought that over for a while.  "Okay," he said at last.  "Just so long as you realized there is an explanation."

So Matt, like Ruthie, now believes me.  But I'm not surprised at that.  After all, it was an odds-on bet that no one ever would.