A bedtime story...

Once upon a time, about a million years ago in some past life, Neil and I lived in a field. We were both shamrocks -- those little clover things with the heart-shaped leaves instead of the round ones. We lived very close to each other. And both of us were mutant shamrocks, each with four leaves instead of the standard three. So, probably the other shamrocks regarded us as a couple of freaks. Maybe we were the outcasts of the field.

But everybody knows that four-leaf shamrocks are lucky.

Neil and I are still pretty strange. Certainly nowhere near anybody's standards of anything.

But speaking strictly for myself, I consider myself extraordinarily lucky.