I am the Miracle Man

 

Once in your life, you will have a day when everything goes right

MY FRIEND SHEILA came into the noodle shop with mud on her shirt, a tear in her tights and a heel missing from her shoe.

“I’m having one of those days,” she lamented.

The guy next to me nodded. “Sweetheart,” he said. “I have one of those days every day.”

One of those days is an English idiom describing a period when everything that can go wrong does.

The miserable guy next to me expanded his theory. “Not only do I have one of those days every day, but I am having one of those lives.”

The fourth diner in the shop was a mathematically-minded youngster. She said: “Surely the law of averages requires that you should have an equal amount of days when everything goes right? A day when you are a sort of miracle man who can’t do anything wrong?”

This statement was greeted by baffled silence. Everyone has days when everything goes wrong. How come no one ever has days when everything goes right?

After a brief discussion, I found a solution which allowed us to set this puzzle aside and get on with the really important business of the meeting, which was to sit around and do nothing. My answer was to categorize the puzzle as “an inexplicable mystery of life” and order some beers.

Okay, so it’s not intellectually satisfying, but I find nothing shameful in being pathetically easy to please.
*
The above conversation took place more than two years ago, and I had completely forgotten about it—until last Wednesday, when something extraordinary happened.

I had the fabled day when everything went right.

I was triple-booked—but taxis appeared every time I stepped out of the door, so I actually managed to be in three places at once.
*
Later, I was hosting a party in a massively overcrowded bar when one of guests lost his passport. Within five minutes, one of the other guests recovered it.
*
Ten minutes later, a hotel key and passport in the name of Ray Hsu were found—but there was no one of that name in the vicinity.

I got on the phone and miraculously managed to track him down.

Even more amazingly, the woman standing next to me was staying at the same hotel and offered to hand-carry the items to him.
*
At 11.27 that night, a third disaster tried to strike. Ouyang Yu, a Chinese-Australian poet, grabbed my elbow. “I’m a bit drunk,” he said. “And I’ve lost my iPhone. It must have fallen out of my pocket.”

He was distraught, knowing that the chances of recovering it were zero at best.

I told him not to worry. “Today I am Miracle Man,” I said. “I’ll find it.” Two minutes later I found it and handed it back to him.
*
A young man who had been watching me work wonders asked: “How did you do that?”

I replied: “I see you don’t recognize me without my cape.” He didn’t get the joke, so I explained that Fate was making up for decades of bad luck by giving me one day when I could fail at nothing. There was only one bit of bad news that day. None of the bars sold lottery tickets.
*

Comments

[Nury]

Hi guys, it's good to be back. I spent most of last week with live audiences and missed talking to readers.

All the Shanghai appearances were sold out and jam-packed, but one event in particular was tough.
I'd been up all night for reasons I won't go into on Saturday and the first audience I saw on Sunday morning was a packed hall of kids.
There were babies, including one who was 4 weeks old. There were grandparents. And there were teenagers, including some who seemed DEAD SET on spoiling the show for everyone, shouting out "toilet" at two minute intervals, long after it had stopped being funny.
My patience muscle grew miraculously that morning, I can tell you!
*
Thanks for the comments on the "Scared to death" story.

One commentator said that he expected a more creative form of poison such as snake venom etc.

Actually, the thing about detective stories is that creativity is nothing to do with whether you use poison a or b or c, but it lies in the method of "delivery" of the murder.

And the convention is that the reader gets the same clues as the detective.

So readers and the main character, Edna, both received the information that the victim and another person shared the ice water, and that the aircons were malfunctioning, and that the author insisted that the function took place in an obscure part of the world (where no forensic tests could be done).

So the reader and Edna end up racing to work out "whodunit".

The nicest comment I got was from an emailer who did not want her name printed, but whose letter said: "You don't need to write fiction in this spot, the stuff that you and your 'gang' get up to is weird and funny and entertaining enough as it is."

There's truth in that. Although I guess there are slightly fewer dramatic, death-defying adventures in our real life than there are in mystery stories.

So far!

[Foxlore]

Welcome back Uncle N, glad you did not succumb to the many seductions of Shanghai and made it back to safe 'harbour' ;-)

[fardel]

Welcome back.
In French we use a word ;Shangailler which is equivalent to kidnap;
I see with pleasure that Shangai let you go.
"And the convention is that the reader gets the same clues as the detective"
i thought that you were not following conventions. which is why I was disappointed

[Mystery reader sometimes writer]

dont listen to Fardel. Please stick to the convention of clues. Fardel;, If you write detective stories without the convention of giving out clues to the readers, you end up with a case that the reader can never solve and its no fun.
if you get clues at the same speed as the detective gets them, then you are "accompanying" him so to speak.

[Lurker]

I think it's also fun if the reader can solve the mystery but the detective character cannot.

[Lia]

Nury, is that you? (referring to the first picture)

[fardel]

Sorry guys
Unable to write more than six lines at a time on one subject, how do you expect me not know about the conventions on writing mystery novels?

Being un-conventional myself, how do you expect me to know about conventions?
I still like the idea of dry snake poison on the left side of the glass of water.