Month: March 2022

One of my frequent readers, Ed, said that my story of lucky laziness reminded him of Heinlein’s story of the man who was too lazy to fail.  Well, to give an alternate interpretation here is the story from Herodotus that informs my expectations for the future.

Back in the fifth century B.C., Polycrates conquered the Greek island of Samos.  He made a treaty with the Pharoah Amasis of Egypt and after they exchanged gifts they corresponded and became good friends.  Now Polycrates embarked on a career as a conqueror, bringing his navy of one hundred triremes to bear, he conquered many islands and plundered the mainland.  He eventually earned the reputation for being unbeatable and protected by fate.

Eventually Amasis heard the same rumors and became concerned for his friend.  He wrote and warned Polycrates that anyone who never had any misfortunes was marked by the gods for disaster.  He recommended that to avert disaster Polycrates should take his most prized possession and cast it away so that no one could ever find it again.  Amasis felt this would save Polycrates from his fate.

Polycrates took this advice seriously.  So, he took a ship out to the middle of the ocean off Samos and in view of his men he tossed his favorite possession, a seal ring, into the deep and then headed home terribly depressed by this loss.

“But on the fifth or sixth day from this it happened that a fisherman, who had taken a fine and great fish, and desired to make a gift of it to Polycrates, brought it to the door and said that he wished to see Polycrates. This being granted, he gave the fish, saying: [2] “O King, when I caught this fish, I thought best not to take it to market, although I am a man who lives by his hands, but it seemed to me worthy of you and your greatness; and so, I bring and offer it to you.”

And of course, the ring is in the fish.  Polycrates is ecstatic and afterwards writes Amasis to relate the amazing occurrence with the ring.  When Amasis reads the letter, he knows that Polycrates is doomed and not wishing to see a friend destroyed he writes back to Polycrates dissolving their friendship.  Years later the Persian satrap of Sardis, Oroetes had Polycrates ambushed and killed.

So that story seems to jibe with my idea of how crazy good luck works.  If you have nothing but good luck then at some point you’ve got to run out.  And then the bottom drops out.  Seems fair.  Besides, the first half of life is the most fun.  If you can have that without grief, I figure it’s reasonable to go over the falls in a barrel somewhere at the tail end without squawking about it.  Anyway, that’s my take on it now.  We’ll have to see if I can be so stoic about it when the rubber meets the road.

Now the funny thing about the story is that many years ago I was on a fishing trip with my father-in-law fishing for striped bass out on Long Island.  He was literally the Old Fisherman of the Sea but for the whole day we didn’t catch anything.  Skunked.  But right at the end of the day, far off, he sees a patch of water that’s boiling with activity.  He starts up the motor and shoots over to it and we start catching huge bluefish.  We catch so many we fill up the boat.  But suddenly I notice that my wedding ring is gone.  The blue fish slime is slippery stuff and the ring must have slipped off while were fishing.  Now my father-in-law was an expert on bluefish and he assured me that a flashing gold ring would have been snapped up by such a huge school of bluefish without a doubt.  So, he laughed at me and said it was up to me to come back someday and try to catch the fish that ate my ring.  And once again my luck holds up.  If a man loses his wedding ring there’s no better way to lose it than when in the company of his father-in-law.  It’s always been a good story ever since.

Years later when I read that story in Herodotus it struck me how lucky we didn’t find the ring in any of the fish we cleaned that day.  I might have ended up like Polycrates and Camera Girl would have been a very pretty widow.