Luck Be A Lady (My Sister)

It’s kind of a running joke in my family that [Sister] is a reality warper. Her luck is, quite simply, absurd. Sometimes, it feels like the world is bending over backward to accommodate her.

I’ve got a long list of events I can rattle off to prove her luck, but that’s for another time. This is a conversation that happened at the start of this year.

Sister: “I want to get a new gaming PC. Can you build one for me?”

Friend: “Sure thing. But maybe now isn’t such a good time? There’s a shortage of GPUs at the moment, and so they now cost a bomb. At your budget, the GPU would eat up nearly half of it alone. We’d have to really skimp on the rest of the computer.”

Sister: “Okay. I’m gonna have to study for my finals, anyway, so you don’t have to build it until summer.”

Friend: “But the parts…”

Sister: *Waving dismissively* “I’m sure it’ll sort itself out by summer.”

Me: “Sis, that’s not likely to happen.”

Sister: *Rolling her eyes* “All right, fine.” *Takes a deep breath* “I, [Sister], wish, here and now, that the GPU price would go down by the time my final exams are over.”

She gave us a baleful look.

Sister: “Problem solved.”

Fast forward a few months into 2022, and suddenly, Crypto crashes, causing cryptocurrency miners to start selling their GPUs, driving GPU prices down right around the time [Sister] is wrapping up her exams and has told [Friend] to start ordering parts.

Two weeks later, [Friend], [Sister], and I are sitting down in my room, each holding a brand new GPU. We found someone online who was offering a buy-one-get-two-free deal, I kid you not.

Me: “Well, that was stupid. Even by the standards of your luck, this was particularly egregious.”

Friend: *Disbelievingly* “A trillion-dollar crash. I lost years of investments — five thousand dollars — all because you wanted GPUs to be cheaper.”

He shakes his head.

Friend: “You must have burnt an entire lifetime’s worth of luck with that.”

Sister: “Nah, I’ve still got plenty left in the tank. Mark my words.”

Another two weeks later, [Sister] went to Las Vegas with her friends and won fifteen thousand bucks while playing cards. Yeah, her luck is still going strong.