I am notorious for having absolutely the worst luck ever imaginable. If something bad has occurred and I am within ten feet of it, you can probably be sure that it was caused by me.

Of course, my teachers do not seem to take it from my perspective; they insist that every single stupid thing that happened within the vicinity of me was indeed caused by me.

So at a school party, when my friend Udd asked me if I wanted to try my luck at the cake walk, I said no. It was impossible, I told him. I explained to him about my pitiful luck.

But he insisted, and finally, I gave in and entered a ticket. I lost on the second round. I mouthed I-told-you-so at Udd and walked away after reminding him not to waste all of his money.

Around an hour later, I ran into Udd exchanging more money for tickets. I asked him how he had spent his twenty tickets so quickly. He had twice as much money as me, because I was playing it conservative and only buying tickets as I used them.

He told me he had spent them all on the cake walk. I was absolutely astounded.

“All of it?” I asked him.

“Yeah, and I didn’t even win anything. There were only six people on most of the rounds,” he told me soberly.

It was quite hard to hold back a laugh; Udd had apparently even worse luck than I had. Our math teachers had taught us about probability, and I at least had that on my side. But apparently even probability escaped him.

Just then, Matt walked by. He was another one of my friends, and the look on his face suggested he wanted something.

“Hey, you wanna go to the cake walk with me?” he asked us.

“Don’t,” Udd and I warned. “It’s a total ripoff and you don’t get anything.”

“Suuuuuuuuure,” he said, and paid for the cake walk. He entered his ticket in, and sat down. The round begun and one by one, people began to get filtered out as they lost.

And then he won.

Udd looked like he was ready to bang his head on a table, but thankfully here was no table nearby.

“Dude,” he said.