Ladybugs are lucky. Or so the story goes. People love them, at any rate. They think they’re cute. We count their spots. Even if you are disgusted by insects, there’s a good chance you think ladybugs are cute and harmless.
But not me. I am a ladybug mass murderer. I actively search out ladybugs so I can kill them. When ladybugs die they smoosh yellow and let out a stink. I assume all ladybugs, in the death throes, pee themselves from terror. And yet I go on killing the cute little bastards.
My apartment has a plethora of the winged horrors and I have found them in my pillow case, on my neck, in my sink, on my table, climbing on my pans, napping on my blanket. It occurs to me now that I’m a magnet for ladybugs.
This is encouraging on the one hand. Tiny luck-bugs are actively seeking me out.
On the other hand, what does it say about me that I ruthlessly assassinate them, these tiny heralds of blessing? That my floor is littered with the speckled shells of deceased lady-lucks?
I don’t quite believe in luck, though. Never have. Luck’s for people who think that life can be improved with little steroid shots of magic. Luck is for people who see just enough to recognize how extraordinary rare life can be, and find it terrifying. Terrifying to grasp that the sheer scientific odds of you existing as you are, the person you’ve become, are absurdly astronomical. Luck explains the unexplained for those that need an answer to everything.
Or to be honest, maybe the guilt of hundreds of homicides is weighing on my conscience and I’m trying to validate these innocent deaths through a tangential rant about luck.
Who’s to say?
Notes from the Sea 