Orwell's Luck Read Online Free PDF

animation, locked solidly in the ice in mid-swim, their fins extended, their mouths open in astonished mid-gulp. Further down I could see the lifeless bodies of two unlucky leopard frogs. I suspected there might be more of them dug into the mud.
    I pounded on the glassy surface with a shovel. It bounced back into the air like a basketball. There was no hope for these water dwellers. Their luck had definitely run out.
    Why does it happen like this? I wondered. Why must creatures, through no fault of their own, be run over or frozen solid? I couldn't figure it out. Some detective!
    The Super Bowl score turned out just exactly as my horoscope had predicted. At first, I kept the information under my hat, as I had been advised. At one point, I made a stab at mentioning it to my father, but since my mother had disposed of the stinky newspaper that contained the proof, he wasn't buying it.
    "Of course the final score was in the paper," he said. "The Super Bowl is one of the biggest shows on TV. The newspaper has to report the results."
    "But this was before the game!" I insisted.
    "That's impossible," he replied.
    "Well, it's interesting you should say that," I responded, "because look at what my horoscope—our horoscope—says for today!"
    I thrust the comics page of the newspaper into his hands. I had just finished deciphering Scorpio's message. It said
THINGS ONLY SEEM IMPOSSIBLE BEFORE THEY HAPPEN .
    My father took a moment to decode the seven special numbers, then announced, "There's a reason they put this stuff in with the funnies, you know."
    What I didn't tell my father was that this latest horoscope was an installment in yet another series, this time apparently having to do with life's tougher questions. Over the past week, I had received
THE MEANING OF LIFE IS TO SEE
    LEARN BY DOING THERE'S NO OTHER WAY
    UNDERSTAND YOURSELF AND
YOU WILL UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING
    WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO DO TODAY MATTERS
and
BE WHO YOU REALLY ARE ALL DAY.
    This last astrological suggestion had been very helpful at school. In fact, in science class, when I held up my hand to answer a question, I blabbed on about what was happening to the wild animals that live around here, even though it had little to do with the original question. Afterward, this one boy came up to me in the hall and said, "I liked what you said to the teacher. I don't know if he got it, but I did."
    He had brown hair that looked like his mother had mussed it with her hands as he left for school. The rest of the school day was great.
    Naturally, I told Orwell all about it. He was very attentive. Most people would look at Orwell and think he was just sitting there bored. But I knew him pretty well by now. Orwell was always thinking. He looks like he's not moving, but inside his little brain, where he doesn't need to use his feet, ideas are hopping around like popcorn in a pan.

A brainstorm
    My father's job during this troublesome time in our lives consisted primarily of buying lottery tickets. Sometimes I would accompany him on the two-minute road trip to the Saturn-Mart at the corner of our winding street and the busy four-lane boulevard that leads commuters to and from the highway.
    There are a dozen different kinds of lottery tickets for sale at the Saturn-Mart, each promising a chance on a fortune for as little as a dollar. My father never spends more than two dollars at a time.
    "You only need one set of numbers to win," he said.
    "Then why buy two?" I asked.
    "Just in case," he replied.
    A two-dollar ticket gets you two rows of six numbers each. One of the numbers is more valuable than the other five. If you get all the numbers right, you win millions. If you get five of them, but miss the most valuable one, you still win thousands.
    Once in a while, there's a picture in the newspaper of some guy winning a bundle. He's always somebody you never heard of.
    Meanwhile, my horoscopes had switched into a more personal mode. One sunny morning, I was greeted with this