Opportunity

Francis Ford Coppola’s brother taught as Dean at my university. Coppola used to remind students, “Art depends on luck and talent.” Silicon Valley engineers began to design computers. The genius named Guy Kawasaki used to admit, “A good idea is about ten percent and implementation and hard work, and luck is 90 percent.” I don’t know if these well wishes regarding luck are true. The truth is different for different people everywhere. I got a job working for the Ambassador of Australia by the time I turned twenty. The executives took me with them on business trips to Egypt, Greece, and Turkey. Benjamin Franklin insisted that “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” I wrote essays for strippers that couldn’t write a term paper for themselves. After exercising in the college gym, a health club off campus hired me for eight hours a day to multitask for the summer. The club manager watched the front desk as I worked the cash register, sold gym memberships to new customers, cleaned machines, weights, and eventually trained customers. Sometimes the customers tipped me $10 bucks. I met celebrities who used the tanning beds. The gym declared bankruptcy. I baked scones at a downtown bakery in the morning from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm. From 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm, I sold the scones, cookies, and coffee upstairs at the cash register. There was a senior citizen that came into the bakery from the health club. We weren’t friends, but I recognized him. He looked poor. He wore the same faded red vest every day. The red began to turn pink to white as the old fabric color faded away. Assuming the man was poor, I gave him a free slice of cheesecake with a cup of coffee each afternoon. We began to speak about city life as if we had known each other for ages, but the conversations began and stopped with small talk about the city.

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