Chances are that you found this journal entry via stumbling haphazardly across a well-meaning tag. By extension, chances are good that you also know who Shigesato Itoi is. If you don’t, back your cursor up a few letters and mind the link.
This post, however, deals with one of Itoi’s forays into prosaic writing. This slickly irreverent excerpt is from a collection of WarioWare-portioned short stories that he had penned with famed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. Yeah, I don’t kow who that is, really.
Jinx
Having a black cat cross your path is nothing at all. After all, I own a black cat of my own.
But bad things do happen on days I don’t win the Nobel Prize. For instance, when I inserted a 10-yen coin to make a phone call, I didn’t get my coin back even though the line was busy.
Days in which I lose a leg in a car accident are often quite unlucky, too. One time a hot dog fell right out of a bun I was holding.
Rainy days aren’t much better, either. One time an umbrella I had just bought got completely wet.
Unlucky things often happen when I’m mugged at night, too. Why, just the other day, I forgot to throw out the trash.
Bad things happen when I go into a classroom and see beautiful girls all sitting at their desks. In some cases, I’ve been so elated that I wet my pants.
Even so, the very worst is when you lose your life. The day it happened to me was the same day they announced the winning lottery numbers.