My brother, Ryan, is actually the "luckiest" of us all. Now he isn't wealthy or prosperous nor does everything he does always fair well. Nope. This guy is lucky and trust me, he has needed EVERY OUNCE of it.
It started when he was young. He and my other brother, Justin, were climbing a tree playing army (all decked out in full face paint, etc.) and the branch Ryan was hanging onto broke, plummeting him something like 18 feet to the ground. He missed the railroad tie below by a fraction as well as the fence. At the hospital, the docs couldn't believe he hadn't been more injured (I'm sure it helped when they realized that the dark colors all over his face were not, in fact, bruising).
Fast forward a few years to Friday, September 13th, 2001. That night Ryan was driving his vintage Z a little too fast around a corner and lost control, careening into a couple of other cars before flipping over and bursting into flame. It just so happened that a bystander saw the whole thing from his kitchen window and jumped over his rear fence, dragging Ryan and his friend out of the car just moments before the car burst into flame, melting the tires to the road. (The asphalt had a huge black mark until the city repaved the road years later.) Although Ryan's friend spent some time in the hospital, Ryan managed to escape with lacerations and bruises. The top of his right ear was torn off but reattached (and now it's a little floppy) and he has a distinct scar on his scalp that you can see when his hair is short. Fittingly, it is in the shape of a 13 with a backwards 3. The doc who sewed it up told Ryan it kind of freaked him out to be sewing up a "13" shaped cut on Friday the 13th.
The next few years for Ryan held more adventures with his characteristic "luck" holding. He never had it easy but things managed to come through in the end for him. He made it back through some really rough spots, giving us all a call to remark on how much his life had turned around.
This year, Ryan moved here by us. He'd only been here a few weeks when another remarkable event took place. He and my brother Justin were approached by a police officer in the desert and when the officer got their names and information, he told Ryan "you need to get those warrants down in Tuscon taken care of, son." Ryan had no idea what he was talking about and said "what warrants?" The officer told him that there were a few outstanding warrants for a Ryan with the same middle and last name and birthdate down in Tuscon, which completely baffled Ryan since he'd only been there twice and never approached by any officer for anything while he was there. So when Ryan got home, he called and checked it out. Turns out, there is a guy with the same exact name (first, middle and last) who was born on the SAME DAY as Ryan. Except for one small thing - the guy was born in 1976, not 1986. The cop didn't catch that one thing and could have arrested Ryan and taken him in long before they actually figured it out.
Yeah, one "lucky" guy. :)
Then this past week, Ryan was over for dinner. The next morning, he knocked on the door at 7am, saying he thought he'd left his phone here at our house. We tore apart the house looking for it, couldn't find it anywhere. He'd already torn his apartment and car looking for it, too. Shaun went out with Ryan and they looked again in his car for it, with Shaun calling the phone to see if they could hear it ring anywhere.
No luck. Had Ryan's "luck" gone away????
Then Shaun came running inside saying "Mom! This guy just called me on my phone - he has Uncle Ryan's phone!" So he handed his phone to Ryan who talked to the guy and figured out where it was. Ryan and Lee went down to retrieve it.
The phone, apparently, was in a bush by the side of the road five blocks away from our house. There's no way it could have fallen out of his car and wound up there, nor could it have slid off his car and wound up there. He would have gone around too many corners and it was on the wrong side of the street for that to happen. The guy who found it had just happened to be dropped off by his wife at a buddy's house that morning and heard this weird sound coming from a bush across the street (it was ringing as Shaun was calling it). Because it kept ringing, this guy walked over to the bush and found the phone and then called Shaun back. The phone was undamaged. No scratches or dents or dings. And the battery wasn't dead.
Yeah, one "lucky" dude. :) I think that he has a special guardian angel.
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