Captain Wentworth had no fortune. He had been lucky in his profession, but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing. But he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted. He had always been lucky; he knew he should be so still. – Jane Austen, Persuasion
I knew I was born lucky the day I started kindergarten. Kids who weren't as lucky went hungry; they went to school without breakfast and had no lunch the days we went on field trips. Even though Mama always said she had no money, I always had at least a peanut butter sandwich to eat and a roof over my head every night. If that didn't make me lucky, what would?
After we grew older and Mama died, I was still lucky. The day I turned fourteen, I got myself a job at McDonald's, and that was my insurance against getting hungry even though Sophia had to drop out of community college to find work and pay the rent. And then Croft's luck became my luck, when he got into NESEP (Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program) which meant he could come back, marry Sophia, and get paid to go to college. That last part was the most important part because it meant for the first time in my life, there were two grown-ups in the family getting wages, and I could put all my money from work into our college fund.
When Edward went to college, I got lucky again because he got to go for free. He qualified for a needs-based grant at UMich Ann Arbor, the same place where Croft was going, so he could hitch a ride with Croft to campus every day and continue living with us instead of spending money on the dorms. I went on making money, working year-round stocking grocery shelves after school, and by the time I reached senior year, I was the richest eighteen-year-old in my neighbourhood, with all of ten grand to my name.
That year, the year I was eighteen, was when my luck got crazier and crazier, but the cash stopped rolling in with it. After the guidance counsellor said I was smart, I figured I'd show 'em just how smart I was and ran up a bunch of applications to all the toniest colleges in the country. Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale, you name it, I applied for it. By the time I was done, I ran one grand down from my college fund, but I got a huge stack of acceptance letters in return, and the associated bragging rights, of course. That was luck too – in the big scheme of things, I was probably no great shakes, but I bet I hit every single diversity checkbox, just by virtue of being black and having an address in a mobile home park.
My biggest windfall came when I got into ROTC – getting the scholarship itself was tough enough, but there were so many types of packages that having the grades alone weren't enough to guarantee you a full ride. Yet that was what I got, and it was the only way I could become a fighter pilot. It meant the military was laying down two hundred grand on my college education, yet hardly any of that found its way into my pocket. They paid stipends for my books and a monthly spending allowance, but the biggest thing I needed to pay for myself was room and board. I got lucky again with a quad room in a frat house for freshman year, which was cheaper than the dorms and gave me a place to park my butt during term breaks, for Sophia and Edward had both left the country so campus was the only home I had.
Croft gave me luck when he gave me his car, because even though it was a complete beater, I never had any car trouble. But the day Sophia left her job to join him at his Navy base, making a road trip of dropping me off at college along the way, was the day I started paying for my own gas.
Harville and Benwick brought me luck too – when they moved off campus in sophomore year, they let me stay with them, renting a corner of their living room. Somehow, we always managed to get sublets every summer, so we didn't have to pay rent when we weren't living there. My rent was the cheapest it could possibly get, but still eight grand was gone by the time I finished four years of college.
Man, I lucked out BIG in the girlfriend department; for Anne had me eating like a king on a shoestring grocery budget, and she never complained when I didn't have the dough for fancy dates.
Every summer I drove down to Texas, earning money pumping fuel into private planes to pay for my flight lessons. Fighter pilot slots were highly limited and competitive, so I needed all the flying experience I could get on my own time and my own dime to maximize my chances of getting picked for a slot. It was good money, much better than what I could earn stocking shelves in a store, but the days were long and tiring, and all the money I got went into my lessons, gas, room and board.
That last summer, the one between junior and senior years, I finally felt I had it made. I'd gotten through the Rated Board and been awarded a pilot slot, my GPA was on track to graduate summa cum laude, and I was still getting a good summer gig lined up at the FBO*. My luck was at an all-time high, and after the amount I'd set aside for senior year rent, I had about five hundred bucks left in my college fund.
Well, the summer of '99 was the one when Eminem went on the Vans Warped Tour. How could I miss that – he was a kid from Detroit, just like me, right there becoming the next big thing. The next summer, I'd be busy with pilot training, stuck on a base with no time off and no way out. I had my whole life in front of me to fly an F-16 and earn more money, so where do you think the five hundred bucks went? It wasn't as if I could do anything better with it, like buying a house or a car or anything. Heck, why would I need a house anyway, when the military would give me one for free after I married Anne?
On the 2nd of June 2000, I finally got everything I'd ever dreamed of. That was the day I graduated from MIT, got commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Air Force, and best of all, it was the day Anne agreed to marry me. But it was also the day I spent the very last dollar of my college fund. I had all the things I wanted, except for money in my bank account.
Oh, of course that was a bummer, a huge one. But never mind – the big dough was just about to come, and didn't I know it?
*FBO stands for Fixed Base Operator, a facility where private and business aircraft are housed and maintained.