I’d rather be lucky than be dead.

I have a friend for whom everything seems to work out fine regardless of the circumstances. No matter the trouble he may find himself in, the universe invariably intervenes and saves his skin.

The most frequent example of this takes place on the golf course. Whenever he hits a golf ball into the trees, the ball will almost always strike a branch and come bouncing back out on the fairway.

Nearly every time.

When it doesn’t come bouncing out, it’s only because it’s managed to find just the right spot between two trees where there is still a clear shot at the green. Quite often the ball will be sitting atop several blades of impossibly stiff grass, in perfect position for the next shot.

It’s no wonder I’ve only beaten him once in my life. I’m competing against him and the universe at the same time. 

Years ago, he inadvertently set off the school’s fire alarm while melting recycled crayons in an oven as part of a classroom project. The entire student body emptied onto the playground and the fire department sent its engines to the school, thinking it was a real alarm. I watched the situation unfold with an inappropriate sense of joy, thinking that there was no way my friend was going to squirm his way out of this one. 

But it turns out the fire department had most of its engines on the other side of town that day, testing fire hydrants, so their arrival time to our school had been delayed. As we stood outside with our students, waiting for the engines to arrive, I heard our boss say that this unscheduled fire alarm was actually a blessing in disguise. “Had this been a real fire,” he said, “the fire department’s response time would have been unacceptable. This gives me the chance to have a conversation with them about how to prevent this problem the future.”

See that? My friend sets off the fire alarm, bringing instruction to a halt throughout the school and sending everyone one the playground to stand in line for fifteen minutes, and yet the fire alarm turns out to be a “blessing in disguise.”

The guy can’t lose.  

I thought about him while watching this unbelievable, incredible, inconceivable video.

You’ll see why: