Lucky?

Today is St. Patrick's Day - are you lucky? Jamie has this idea that I'm a "lucky" person - and that I should buy lottery tickets. (Personally, I think my chances of winning the lottery are the same whether I buy a ticket or not.) But she thinks this because of a few instances where I seemed to have gotten lucky:

• When we were engaged I won a wedding dress. She had to work at a bridal fair in the mall and told me to go enter all the raffles, especially one for a dress by a famous "Jessica somebody or other." I certainly wasn't popular when they called my name and I went up on stage to claim my dress - some of those women even booed me!
• We used to travel between Salt Lake and Los Angeles a lot visiting family. Once we were nearly out of gas and found a dusty little town in Nevada to fill up. Jamie wanted me to go inside and try the slot machine - after all, I'm lucky. And on the first quarter I won $10. You should have seen all the crusty looks I got from the local crowd at the lunch counter as a bunch of quarters dropped loudly out of the machine.
• Several years (and children) later on another trip between SLC and LA we spent the night in Mesquite, NV (which is a fairly decent and inexpensive midpoint). The next morning while enjoying the breakfast buffet the kids kept pestering me to "win some money." Finally, on the way out as the pestering reached a fevered pitch, I decided to show them what a waste gambling was. Of course, I won. Again, not much but it totally sunk my lesson.
• I've sometimes won other small things, like tickets or gift cards, although the most recent one wasn't very useful. In fact, everyone at work thought it was really funny - the guy who doesn't drink coffee wins the Starbucks gift card.
• And, of course, I was invited to participate in Amazon Vine. I love reading and now Amazon gives me more free books than I can keep up with (as well as the occasional cool electronics item or software).

So, yeah I guess I've won a few small things over the last 19 years but it's nothing extraordinary. Still, I do feel very lucky but for different reasons. I still wonder how on earth I got so lucky to be married to my beautiful and wonderful wife. It's not like I'm handsome or charming or anything. I might be a nice guy but nice doesn't often get you anywhere in the world. And it's not like she didn't have a LOT of other choices - every single guy at work was asking her out and most of them at church as well. For the life of me I still can't imagine what she ever saw in me, but I'm glad she saw something. And now, in addition to her I've also got four of the best kids a dad could ever want!

Maybe I am lucky after all.